Now playing: “Really Real” by Robyn

This was a busy week, and so I’ve turned the focus a bit meta for No First Drafts. Consider this as much of a photo gallery as it is a blog post.

I’ve been thinking (and writing) about habits, and how tough they can be. I almost titled this piece “Thursday is the most important day of the week,” but then this week happened. This week I learned that every day is more or less the most important day of the week. This isn't just for the obvious reason that every day is full of opportunity for joy and surprises, but you can also build positive momentum that helps when something unexpected derails you.

8 days ago, the heating coils in my apartment's hot water heater gave up the ghost, and that led to a week where the best laid plans didn’t stay that way. And after I was chasing after a FedEx guy, I wound up doing day job work on the weekend, and I blamed it all on a glitch in the app-based doorbell matrix.

All of that left me with thoughts of how I've been trying to structure my week, and how that has helped me go through a week where little really happened as planned. This is why I'm writing about my week in the abstract.

Who is this for? What is this for? This is not something I'm writing to say "do what I do," and "go to the gym this much," or anything. This is for those trying to work their way out of a funk, as a way of saying “look at the whole week, not just today and tomorrow. Look for patterns, and how to best prepare.

Every Monday in March 2026 saw me commit to the bit of going to the gym for my new strength training workout. It’s sort of why Sunday night is when I try and not stay out too late, though I just made plans for tonight (this was originally published on a Sunday morning). If I can do that on a Monday, the grumpiest day of the week, I should have no excuse throughout the rest of the week, right? Then, work kicks off, I re-examine my week's schedule, manually events from my work calendar into my personal one, and focus on testing products at work. 

I try and rarely make plans for Monday evening, though they do happen. 

I'm not in a high-stress job or anything, but Monday always has a habit of exhausting all of us, right? So this is why I find it funny that I expect Tuesday is the "OK, this won't be simple" day of it all, and yet I still start with a morning gym trip. If I went on Monday, though, the gym trip shouldn't feel like a big deal, and so I believe I will have it in me for whatever extra thing the second day of the week has up its sleeve. This Tuesday's morning had an extra chore, for example, and so I was lucky that I got up early enough to get that done on top of everything else. 

These days, there's seemingly always a product announcement to cover on Tuesdays, and then there's a movie to see or a friend to grab a bite with. It's also pretty frequently one of the in-office days that tests my memory to pack my ID card. By this point in the week, I get some of my recurring reminders to stay on top of the good habits. 

I know the whole "expect the unexpected" thing is trite, but that's what Tuesday is about for me. 

And, yes, somehow I hopefully do a third morning gym trip in a row on Wednesday before work. Back when my workouts were just the same 33 minutes on the elliptical, I would see how many days in a row I could do this. But by the end of the third one of my current routine I always feel like "yeah that's a wrap."

You know how I said Tuesday is the surprises day? Well, I was wrong, as this Wednesday was the one with a little extra on top, because I found myself waiting and waiting for a FedEx guy who showed up only to have the video doorbell glitch on me, leaving me to run down stairs and try and fail to get his attention. Then, once I gave up, it was a day that required a little more coffee as I started to feel the effects of all that gym time. 

And on top of all of that, I get the obvious chores done before I go to bed. You know, the things you might think you can get away with waiting a day on. The laundry is folded and put away, for example.

Going to bed with a clean task list on Wednesday is important because Thursday needs cleaned and clear spaces for its weekly tasks. I don't remember why I picked Thursday for my weekly talk therapy appointments, but I quickly realized it was the perfect day for it. My big Thursday goal is to feel reset and ready for the weekend, so much so that I started calling it ReseThurdsay, an awful mouthful of a word.

Remember how I said my hot water heater went out on me on the previous weekend? While it was both annoying and something I could live through thanks to my nearby gym's showers, the lack of hot water delayed two of my weekly Thursday chores (including washing my bed sheets). On top of all of that, I was still waiting on that aforementioned delivery. And, yet, by noon, I'd gotten the package I'd been waiting for and the plumber had fixed the hot water heater. 

And, yes, I don't need to hit the gym four times a week. I can take days off when I want to, but this all happening as such is why I'm fortunate that Thursday is the first day of the week where I don't go to the gym. I was able to get through my day and to therapy and accomplish what I needed to with work. 

While I've been told I probably don't need to go to the gym four times a week, that's how I start my Friday morning. This is because the gym becomes even more clogged with people and difficult to use efficiently during the weekend, and I want to get to my fourth and final weekly visit before that happens. Of course, this is why I go on Monday through Wednesday, to prevent the thought of going on Saturday or Sunday. So that when work ends on Friday, the only thing close to work I have left is this newsletter.  

I must have been taking notes the first time I heard Mike Reno, the lead vocalist for Canadian rock band Loverboy, sing "everybody's working for the weekend." Because those previous five days are set up to let me do as much or as little as I want to do over the weekend. This weekend, I've been seeing as many movies as time and my body will allow. 

If I wind up having to skip a gym day between Monday and Wednesday, I can make it up on the weekend, but a week going as planned means I have as little in my backlog as possible. Which I love. 

Thank you for reading this far.

Next time, it’s time for a quarterly review