You’d think we’d have come to terms with Monday by now. Technically, it’s no different than any other weekday—it has the same number of hours, the same responsibilities and demands, interactions with many of the same people, the same opportunities to excel and shine. Even so, there’s just something about the first day of the traditional workweek that tends to elicit feelings of gloom and doom, as we mourn the end of the “freedom” of the weekend and a return to the “daily grind.”
In fact, one study found that Monday morning at 11:17 a.m. was the time when respondents felt the most unhappy. And in a recent survey by a sleep organization, 81 percent of employees said they felt “elevated anxiety on Sunday in anticipation of Monday.”
But that doesn’t mean you have to resign yourself to starting off each week down in the dumps. By making some small, intentional changes in your mindset and behavior, you can put an end to Monday morning melancholy and shift your focus to a fresh start.