Do you skip into the office Mondays with a spring in your step, ready to tackle the day?

Or do you drag your feet, grab your coffee, and then hide from your boss for as long as humanly possible…

If you answered the latter, then don’t worry. Because most people don’t approach Monday the way productive people do. Thankfully, we’ve studied the most productive people on the planet. At Hello Innovation, we’ve learned that a solid foundation on Monday can lead to a fantastic week. And fantastic weeks lead to job promotions, career upgrades, and all sorts of perks that make life better.

All that said, here are 5 of the most important differences in behavior between productive people and everybody else. Just applying one of these lessons on Monday will boost your productivity and give you the energy required to bring your fullest to your workday.

Pick Your Week’s Priorities

The most successful and productive people get that way because they don’t work reactively. Instead of looking for the first fire that needs to be put out on Monday, take a more strategic approach to your work week. Select the top 5-7 priorities that you want accomplished by end-of-day Friday, and schedule them. Then, choose the most important priority and start working on it immediately. From Laura Vanderkam’s “What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast”.

20 Minutes of Exercise

It’s no secret that exercise in the morning gets your blood pumping and your endorphins levels rising… making you feel better, stronger, and happier. That’s a great way to start the week. How can you make this easy? If you don’t want the hassle of driving to the gym in addition to your commute (which could turn “20 minutes” into an hour, easily), then pick out some exercises you can accomplish in your home. Pushups, jumping jacks, situps, and burpees can all be done at home, without any weights. And not only will you be pumped up to get your work week started on Monday, you’ll also start to cultivate a fitter physique! Not a bad byproduct of success. From UCLA Health.

Read 10 Pages of an Interesting Book

This might be one of the greatest productivity hacks there is. It takes very little time to read 10 pages. But when you read, you’re stimulating your mind – in effect, you’re pressing the on button to your brain to start working for you! Reading fiction can make you more creative, and reading non-fiction can give you insights that you can immediately apply into your work. Reading just 10 pages per day means in one year you’ll have read 3,650 pages – that’s enough for 22 books in a year. Imagine how that knowledge can be applied to your work to take it to the next level! This insight from Tim Enochs, CEO of Irrefutable Success.

Do One Task at a Time

Did you know that multitasking makes you less intelligent than being stoned? No joke. When you’re stoned, your IQ drops by about 5 points. If you multitask, your intelligence drops 5 points if you’re a woman, and 15 points if you’re a man! Yep, women definitely can multitask better than men, but the point is that everybody’s intelligence lowers when they multitask. So once you’ve selected your priorities for the week, schedule a block of time to accomplish that one task. You will get more done, and you’ll actually stay smarter. From Tony Wong, project management “black belt”.

Work in 60 to 90 Minute Blocks

The most productive people in the world block off large chunks of time. This helps them eliminate distractions. I know that you want to check Facebook to see how your friends spent their weekend, but Monday morning is a time of results for productive people. Block off an hour or more for your work, and push yourself to stick to working through that block. After that, you can take a break, eat a snack, go for a walk, or yes, even check Facebook. If you can commit to an hour of solid work at a time, you will get more work done than you could ever imagine! From AskMen.com.

Apply What You’ve Learned…

Now that you have productivity secrets of Monday morning pros, you need to put them into action! Knowledge is useless unless it’s acted upon, so select at least one of these principles and put it into action next Monday. You will find yourself with more energy and focus, and at the end of the day, you’ll get more sh*t done.

Want to work in a place where making big things happen is the norm? Check out our open jobs here.

Image credit: Samantha Kulpinski