It’s Sunday night. You’ve spent much of the day in your jim-jams binging box sets, but you’ve just crossed that uneasy 6pm line between the weekend and Monday eve. Thoughts of work creep in and interfere with your chill. Wide-eyed you suddenly remember the work you bailed on in favour of a Friday afternoon wine. Anxiety strikes and you start to fear the coming dawn.

It’s OK, we’ve all been there. But, what now?

First things first, calm down. Sure, it would’ve been better if you’d met your deadlines, but you’ll be a model of focus and self-control with these 5 clever tactics to help you form a fast and highly effective plan for fighting off the dreaded Sunday night fear;

1: Focus

The biggest waste of time right now is panicked, anxious, self-critical thought. Woulda, coulda, shoulda nonsense offers no value or solutions. Take a deep breath and decide right now to focus on an action plan instead of paralysing thought-analysis.

(exhale) Game face time.

2: Get organised

With your newfound focus, list every incomplete task you can remember from last week and prioritise two things:

1.    Stuff your boss wants asap
2.    Stuff your whistle-blowing clients or colleagues want asap

This is what you need to do first to avoid the first wave of trouble. Everything else can wait.

3: Prepare some easy wins

Next up, let’s add achievement and progress to the plan for tomorrow. Go back to your list and look at:

•  Jobs you’ve nearly finished
•  Jobs that’ll take 5/10 minutes to complete
•  Bigger jobs that you can start to demonstrate you’re “on it”

With the urgent stuff done, your ‘job complete’ list is about to look pretty impressive. Perhaps better than a normal day! Doesn’t that feel good?

4: Remember your successes

With a solid catch up plan now in place why not add a layer of self-care?

Let go of the ‘what I didn’t do’ worry and recall what went well. We give ourselves such a hard time, it’s important to celebrate the wins too. After all, if challenged you’ll want to run off your wins without hesitation.

This leads us nicely to the final part of your fear battle…

5: Reward yourself

No one will appreciate the effort involved to haul yourself from the brink of calamity so there’s unlikely to be gold at the end of your secret and suspiciously brown rainbow. Instead, bask in the smell of your own glory by rewarding yourself with an unusually elaborate lunch or special treat.

Phew! Panic over. In just five easy steps you’ve calmed down, worked out how you’ll meet deadlines, prioritise tasks and enjoy recent successes. Thinking about your achievements will improve confidence, reduce stress and get you back on track for a good night’s sleep and a productive week. Well done. Now to plan that fancy-ass lunch!