It usually arrives mid-week, that dreaded feeling of "here we go again".

The bones are tired.

The work is piling up.

The meetings are double booked.

The people you live with are wondering if you still hold membership in the family.

In a word- dread.

Dread is what overtakes us when we let life get out of balance. We resent the very work that we once loved and start to wonder if life is greener on the other side of the fence.

I can surely relate to these feelings and I usually kick myself for not practicing more preventative measures to keep happiness in first place and dread far in the rear-view mirror. I keep coming back to the following three things:

Nutrition, Working Out and Rest: be attentive to how much sleep you are getting. Is your diet contributing to that "bogged down" feeling? Are you working out so as to relieve stress?

Routine: is your job getting caught in the quagmire of the mundane? If so, mix things up by waking up later, shifting your routine and setting up appointments that are actually fun. Sometimes a slight tweak in the routine can go a long way.

Preparation: are you running from one thing to the next? Put in 5 minutes of preparation so as to yield 25 minutes of productivity. By blocking off chunks of time for specific projects, more gets done than if we simply flitted from one crisis or interruption to the next.

What works for you when you get bogged down with work?