Is Monday misery necessarily a symbol that you don’t enjoy your job. I love my job and I work from home, but I still loathe that Monday morning feeling…
It could be, especially if you are unhappy at work. You’ve just spent 2 days doing what you want to do and now it’s back to the grindstone. Some people get the ‘Monday morning feeling’ on Sunday afternoon and can literally feel sick with worry. If you feel this coming on, one approach is to shout STOP and visualise a large red stop sign and do this any time you think about work before Monday morning.
Most of us don’t feel this bad, but we’d still rather be doing fun stuff rather than our job, but we need the job to pay for the things that we do enjoy. If you don’t enjoy your job and you hate Monday’s you have a few choices:
- Find a job you do enjoy
- Look for things within your job that you do enjoy and try to do more of them
- Put treats into your day to keep you going, such as a brisk walk at lunchtime or lunch with a friend
I think there has been some research proving people are more likely to be depressed on a Monday, and indeed on certain Mondays of the year (Yesterday apparently is the day of the year when most people call in sick!). Is this the case and are we less productive at work therefore on Mondays?
People are more likely to be a ‘bit down’ on a Monday, for the same reason they feel like this when they return from a holiday, because they are doing what they have to do, rather than what they want to do. But are they depressed? This word is used outside of the clinical term and used by many people for when they are feeling a bit low.
One reason people are less productive on a Monday is the need to catch up with colleagues on what we’ve all been doing all over the weekend and then slowly getting your brain back into work mode.
Are most of us guilty of differentiating too much between the weekend and the working week. Should we not try, where possible to mix up rituals and activities we associate with the weekend, and do them in the week, for example, meeting up with friends, going for long walks (at lunchtime or after work), and avoiding rituals such as ‘I will allow myself treats and drinks at the weekend’.
Many of us live for the weekend – time to laze in bed, see friends, go shopping, out for a meal or clubbing, lots of fun things to do. Our week days are more mundane by comparison and we are so busy with work and travel to and from work. We have to get up early for the commute and are late back, so there’s only time to cook a meal and flop in front of the TV. But maybe we should make the time to do something nice. There’s nothing to stop us having a mid week date with friends, either to meet for lunch or perhaps to go to a dance class after work. Why keep the fun stuff to the weekend? Too many of us work in an evening, logging on to emails, working our way through our briefcase. Fine once in a while but not every evening! We can plan to get home at a normal time on a few nights in the week, so there is time to do something you actually want to do.
