Weekender #240

🧠 The twenty bad work habits that are easy to miss in yourself.

⏰ 90% of Americans say a morning routine sets their day, but most spend under 30 minutes on theirs.

📚 The 2025 fiction books readers stayed up too late finishing.

🌱 The case for investing in yourself when you’ve been showing up for everyone but you.

OK, bookmark this for Tuesday morning when you walk back into your inbox.

Congratulations! You’ve made it to the almost-start of summer! That’s exciting for your personal and social life, and a little overwhelming for your work life. You’re about to open your laptop to 200 unread emails. The project you were supposed to finish before the long weekend is still sitting there. The difficult coworker is going to say something passive-aggressive in your first meeting. You’re already tired and you haven’t even started.

Before you open your inbox, pause for a second.

You’re probably feeling burnt out already

Maybe you spent the whole weekend thinking about everything you need to catch up on. Maybe the Sunday scaries started on Saturday night this time. Maybe you’re juggling so much that even three days off didn’t feel like actual rest.

That’s real. That exhaustion is valid.

And work stress is its own kind of paradox: it’s legitimate, and it’s also a privilege. If you’re stressed about career goals and metrics and climbing the ladder, your fundamental needs are met. You’re not worried about where your next meal is coming from or whether you’ll have a roof tonight. You get to worry about achievement and growth. That’s a luxury, even when it doesn’t feel like one.

Think about the life you’re building

You’re working hard because you want time to enjoy the nice things. You want memories with friends and family outside of work. You want the flexibility to take long weekends and actually use them.

And you’re doing it. You did it this weekend.

You might be doing too much work for too little pay. You might be dealing with a boss who doesn’t appreciate you or a coworker who makes everything harder than it needs to be. You might feel like you’re carrying the mental load for your entire team while everyone else clocks out at 5pm.

All of those frustrations are real. And you’re still showing up.

You’re exactly where you need to be

Sometimes work feels like the wrong fit. Sometimes you feel stuck. You are still exactly where you need to be in this moment.

That doesn’t mean you have to stay if you’re stuck. You are not a tree. You can move at any time.

But this moment is the one you’re in. And there’s a quote I love that says, “Enjoy this moment. This moment is your life.”

The moments can still be hard. The hard ones are lessons you carry forward. The difficult coworker is teaching you boundaries. The overwhelming workload is teaching you what you actually need from a job. The feeling of being undervalued is teaching you to advocate for yourself.

Without those lessons, you don’t build the resilience, empathy, and clarity that make you a better version of you.

You’re not behind

Your Tuesday morning might feel overwhelming. You might feel like you’re behind before you even start. Like everyone else has it together and you’re the only one drowning.

You’re not.

Everyone else is also staring at their inbox wondering how they’re going to get through the week, also wondering if they’re doing enough, being enough, achieving enough.

You recharged this weekend. You stepped outside the office. You spent time with people you love doing things that matter to you.

Now you’re ready to transfer that energy into the work week. Not all of it. You don’t have to give work everything. Just enough to show up, do your job, and protect your peace while you do it.

Go crush this Tuesday. You’ve got this.

Thania (TA Sr. Content Systems)

Somewhere right now, a project is stalled because no one knows who owns the next step, the approval is buried in someone’s inbox, and the latest version is named FINAL_v7_ACTUALfinal.

The right project management platform gives your team visibility, accountability, and fewer reasons to schedule another status meeting.

monday.com is ideal for teams that think visually. If your team works better when timelines, ownership, blockers, and priorities are obvious at a glance, monday.com tends to click fast. Especially strong for marketing teams, creative ops, campaign planning, and cross-functional collaboration where visibility matters as much as execution.

Quickbase goes past basic project tracking into building the exact workflow your business actually needs. If your work involves approvals, intake forms, operational handoffs, field teams, compliance, or processes that don’t fit a standard PM template, this is where Quickbase shines. Best for operations-heavy teams whose workflows go beyond simple tasks.

Zoho is a strong fit for teams that want straightforward project management without enterprise-level complexity. Think task lists, timelines, dependencies, time tracking, recurring work, team collaboration, and reporting, with no implementation consultant required to get started. Best for small to mid-sized teams that need structure.

The best setup gives your team fewer places to search and fewer things to guess. Everyone knows where the work lives, what needs attention, and who’s driving it forward.

Want more options to compare? Here are a few more project management tools worth a look.

📚 Read: The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave

A gripping, rich, and deeply moving novel about the power of forgiveness, The First Time I Saw Him picks up right where the epilogue for the The Last Thing He Told Me left off, giving readers the eagerly awaited and absolutely exhilarating sequel to Dave’s global blockbuster.

📺 Watch: Crime 101 (Prime Video)

Chris Hemsworth plays a meticulous jewel thief running scores along LA’s 101 freeway, with Mark Ruffalo as the lone detective on his tail and Halle Berry’s insurance broker caught in between. Bart Layton’s slick neo-noir, based on the Don Winslow novella, lands the tension without taking itself too seriously.

🎧 Listen: Heartbeat by Childish Gambino

Smooth, nostalgic, and just melancholy enough to feel like a whole mood. This one’s for the drives home when you want music that actually matches what you’re feeling, not background noise, but something that hits.

Lights out by 10, no screens after dinner, magnesium on the nightstand. You still wake up groggy and crash by 3pm.

Sleep tracking apps can flag that something is off, but they can’t tell you whether the actual culprit is sleep apnea, hormone-driven insomnia, restless legs, or a bedtime that doesn’t match your chronotype, leaving every new sleep tip another shot in the dark.

Sleep Doctor pairs a free Sleep Quiz with a 1:1 consult with a licensed sleep expert and an at-home clinical sleep study, so the next step is informed by actual data instead of more guessing. You walk away with a specific picture of what’s happening overnight, a real treatment path, and a plan built around their own sleep pattern.

👉 Take the free Sleep Quiz and find out what’s actually keeping you tired.

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Millie is a two-year-old Bernedoodle with the fluffiness of a teddy bear. She’s the queen of cuddles and the boss of belly rubs. When she’s not playing tag with the kids or flopping dramatically for attention, she’s perfecting her “puppy eyes” look (scientifically proven to melt hearts in 0.3 seconds). Basically, Millie is a lovable, tail-wagging, belly-rub-demanding member of the family with a PhD in adorableness.

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