Are the Sunday Scaries Ruining Your Monday?
The Sunday scaries have a sneaky way of becoming the Monday scaries, too (affecting more than half of Americans). When we spend Sunday night mentally running through our inbox, meetings, and never-ending to-do list, we have a tendency to start Monday already feeling behind.
For some, the anxiety is enough to give up on Monday completely. New U.S. workforce data from Deputy suggests the Monday blues may be showing up in how some shift workers approach the start of the week. Over 12 months, 23% of retail workers called out sick on Monday, while 97% of coffee shop and café workers reported Monday shift changes were scheduling swaps (rather than callouts).
The data doesn’t tell us why people are calling out—and a sick day can, of course, simply mean you’re sick. But it does raise an interesting question: If you regularly spend Sunday dreading Monday, is your body trying to tell you something about your workweek? It’s certainly a red flag worth noting.
The good news is that psychologists and wellness experts are all over it and have widely shared ways to combat this anxiety so that it doesn't take over your Monday, from embracing a slow weekend plan to finding a way to sweat it out.
Try this today: Take a minute to consider if you experience signs of the Sunday Scaries (racing heart, trouble sleeping, fixating on the week ahead) and then decide on one thing you can do to find relief, whether it's scheduling an hour of meditation or getting yourself to the gym—because it's all about finding what works for you.
