The weekend.
We look forward to those two days of freedom more than almost anything else. After a long week of work, two days to rest feel earned.
But after a couple of days of R&R, Sunday evening sneaks up and with it a familiar anxiety about Monday. The “Monday Scaries” strike.
Let’s be honest: Mondays are tough. Still, we can learn to welcome the start of the week instead of dreading it.
I like the catchy name for this feeling — fitting, especially with Halloween around the corner. It’s easy to see how a peaceful Sunday can turn sour.
If you dislike your job, your brain starts warning you about stress and conflict. You’ve been trained to hate Mondays, and that’s the real problem to solve.
From my experience, the main cause is the mental pattern we form early in life. As kids we learn that weekdays mean school and weekends mean sleeping in, playing, and chill time. Even our parents seem happier on weekends.
So it’s no surprise we enter working life already wired to fear Sunday night. Two things make it worse: we don’t know how to navigate office life, and we still like to party.
In your 20s it’s easy to fall into hating work. The spiral often starts with hard people: difficult coworkers, bosses, or clients. To cope, many of us lean on happy hours or weekend binge-drinking. We hope marriage or kids will fix it (not that I’m speaking from experience).
In my 20s the Scaries were constant. The childhood pattern was set: school = bad, weekends = great. With little corporate experience and lots of late nights, I’d drink Friday and Saturday, sleep late on Sundays, and then panic about the week ahead.
The Scaries get worse when workplace relationships are poor. Add pandemic-related Zoom fatigue and the mix can feel toxic.
If you don’t have a healthy relationship with your boss — the most important work relationship — anxiety skyrockets. I’ve had some bad bosses, and they fed my Sunday night dread.
If you manage others, one of the worst things you can do is leave your team guessing. My most stressful Sundays came from not knowing where I stood with my boss. I’d rather hear blunt feedback than radio silence. If you’re stuck in that limbo, ask for honest feedback now. Knowing where you stand matters.
The main drivers of the Monday Scaries:
1) The childhood pattern of “weekdays are bad, weekends are good” that stays with you.
2) Weekend habits — drinking late, staying up, eating late — that wreck sleep.
3) Poor work relationships — bad bosses, annoying coworkers, demanding clients.
4) COVID-19 and Zoom fatigue, which added new stress.
5) A lack of healthy Sunday routines with family or friends.
In short: keep weekday routines across the weekend, and get real, frequent feedback at work. That goes a long way.
Practical steps that help:
1) Keep a steady sleep schedule all week. Try to limit changes to 30 minutes at most — go to bed no more than half an hour later and sleep in no more than 30 minutes. If you want a weekend treat, take a short midday nap instead.
2) Move your body on weekends. Don’t treat Saturday and Sunday like punishments you’ve survived; stay active. Weekends are a great time for exercise — save Monday as an easy or rest day.
3) Cut back on heavy drinking. Moderation — one to three drinks max, and not right before bed — helps sleep. I find this easier in my mid-40s, when drinking a lot is less appealing and affects sleep more than it used to.
4) Step away from social media. It’s easy to spend weekends scrolling and feeling worse about life. Turn it off and go for a walk, read, play cards with friends, or have a movie night with the family. Social media is a small part connecting with people and a big part creating unnecessary comparison and stress.
5) Get out and be social in person. Sunday nights don’t have to be about hunkering down and prepping for Monday. When my partner convinced me to join a Sunday bowling league, I resisted — but it turned out to be fun. If bowling isn’t your thing, try a date night or organize a family movie night. These small routines work.
6) Consider a bigger change: switch jobs or rethink retirement.
There are pros and cons to quitting or retiring. If you believe you must never stop working, you may stay stressed if you aren’t engaged. Many long-lived cultures show people staying active and working in some way into old age — they don’t always retire fully. In places like Sardinia, Costa Rica, or Loma Linda, people often keep contributing well into later years and seem to avoid the kind of Sunday dread we feel. They treat every day as meaningful.
But retirement isn’t a guaranteed fix either. It can remove stress, but you might miss the purpose or structure work gave you.
If Sunday night anxiety is a problem, read about Blue Zones and purpose-driven living. Finding meaning helps you handle bad bosses and a shaky job market.
Breaking old conditioning takes time. Stick to a routine all seven days, sleep well, drink less, and avoid heavy meals right before bed.
We don’t bowl in that league anymore, but we still have Sunday family movie night. I don’t get the Monday Scaries like I used to — although I do get anxious some nights because of tensions with my boss and a couple of coworkers.
Take charge of your career and your life, and things get easier. If your boss or workplace is toxic and you’re sure it’s not your fault, act: network, apply, interview, and leave when you can.
Meanwhile, save as much as you can so you have the freedom to make changes. That financial cushion gives you the confidence to handle Tuesday, Wednesday — and every night — not just Sunday.