I have a Sunday ritual. Sometimes I carve an hour from a lazy afternoon or as I watch a movie in the evening. The crucial point is, I never sleep until I finish, even if it means sitting in bed to plot my schedule. Turning the page on my calendar, I begin front-loading my week. Front-loading is placing my most important, time-sensitive, deadline-driven, most hated, or least fun chores on Monday and Tuesday.

I treat these two days as my crunch times. While my coworker’s transition from their weekend, I close my door, hit the ground running, and eat those nasty frogs. I focus on completing my project, but I don’t push beyond my peak productivity levels. When I feel myself fading, I switch to another task, or I take a break. Depending on the size and complexity of the assignment, it may leak into the latter part of the…