Visualise a clear blue sky on an early Sunday evening.

You’ve had a great weekend that you don’t want to end. Time with family, friends and your hobbies. Maybe some house and garden work ahead of a scenic walk and a BBQ in the sunshine?

Tomorrow being Monday, you’re due at the office for another intense, busy week of work. You don’t want the weekend to finish.

Maybe you have this feeling sometimes? Or maybe frequently?

I often have this ‘post weekend blues’ feeling, mainly because I love my time so much with family, friends, food, music, fitness and the outdoors.

With that said, these ‘blues’ are not too bad for me anymore. Firstly, because I am better aware of the detrimental effect from such feelings and the benefits of proactively mitigating them. Secondly, because I am fortunate to have created a career where I really love my work (Ok…maybe 80% of the time!).

Please read on for 8 friendly pointers on how to thwart the pesky ‘post weekend blues’ to instead enjoy a ‘post weekend EPIC’.

#SpoilerAlert! There is very likely to be no rocket science or breaking news within this post, so why are so many successful and less successful people suffering with different forms of stress such as burn out, and low work or life satisfaction?

A lot of this is about consistently minimising stress and maximising positive feelings which in turn is proven to produce a far greater business or career success and general life happiness.

1. Make the best of your weekend – life can be too short, so yes, you need to keep on top of the house, but you’ll boost energy and be more productive with a balance of home, fitness, rest and social time

2. Plan a fairly relaxed Sunday evening – an early night for sleep can really set you up for a great week

3. Don’t jam pack your first day back in the office – it’s hard enough returning to work after a nice weekend, so don’t plan the most dreadful day in terms of back to back meetings and calls with no time for lunch or an email tidy! Also, plan the tasks/meetings you least enjoy for earlier in the day. Your reward can then be getting your teeth into things you enjoy for the afternoon.

4. Map out your week – either on the Friday before the weekend, or first thing on the Monday morning, where you can spread work tasks over the week with a view of balancing your energy levels e.g. don’t plan the most complicated tasks at a point in the day where you are flagging

5. Try Monday evening’s as a date or friends night – the feel good benefits of having something to look forward to on that ‘first day of a long working week’ can do wonders towards creating your ‘post weekend EPIC’

6. Fuel your body and mind – a good sleep routine, a balanced diet, water throughout the day combined with shorts walks and a treat with your favourite caffeinated drink in the morning. If you know this stuff overall makes a difference to energy, focus, productivity and all-round well-being, then your challenge is likely more about doing it more often, and helping those around you to form the same good habits.

7. Plan fitness sessions and breaks throughout the week – starting with Monday morning to kick start the week as you mean to go on. Personally, I find the energy boost and clarity of mind from a morning workout really improves the quality and outputs from my work efforts in less time with less stress.

8. Always seek continuous improvement – how can I work smarter my with my time and with the time of those around me? What’s going well that we can do more of, applying more resource and focus? What else can we do to improve? What should we stop doing?

You can achieve this with profound benefits to yourself and everyone around you at home and in the office. Arguably, the hardest part is doing it consistently, although the adrenaline and feel good factor from the times you do it can be a positively addictive fuel you to keep going with this proactively.

Now I am not you, nor do I represent everyone, so some of the tips herein won’t work or appeal to you. If such is the case, then I recommend you take my thought process shared herein and the provided context to tailor the actions to suit you.

The mindset needs to not be ‘this won’t work for me’. It needs to be, ‘how can I adapt this to make it work for me so I can have a post weekend EPIC next week and from every week hereon’.

Then, as we all know Nike says, ‘Just do it’.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and how you get on next week. Maybe there is a friend or colleague you’d like to tag and share this with to help them, which in turn will help you too? Think of ‘Giver’s gain’ or ‘Pay it forward’. If you’re like me then the buzz from knowing you helped others will be enough reward.

Good luck, be EPIC and keep in touch!