“Have to catch an early train, got to be to work by nine
And if I had an aeroplane, I still couldn't make it on time”
sang The Bangles in their iconic ’80s song about the manic Monday, summing up the sentiment many of us are well familiar with. Waking up on Monday morning, we might refrain from singing, but we, too, “Wish it was Sunday.”
While it likely comes as no surprise, data suggests that for most people, Monday is the most hated working day of the week. A 2023 research paper carried out by Zety found that as much as 41% of respondents put Monday at the top of the list as the most hated workday, followed by Wednesday, Tuesday, Friday, and Thursday, respectively.
According to the aforementioned research, the main reasons for hating Mondays are experiencing the heaviest workload of the entire week, having loads of meetings, often including a report meeting with the boss, and feeling the least motivated and productive.
These reasons also likely add to why as much as 80% of respondents say that Mondays are the most stressful day of their week.
For some people, Mondays are so stressful, the dread starts the day before. Known as the Sunday scaries, the anxiety over the upcoming start of yet another week is something that negatively affects not only people’s weekends but their mental well-being, too.
The research found that 8% of respondents always experience the Sunday scaries whenever the weekend is nearing its end. As many people, though, don’t know the feeling at all. One in ten say they get the scaries often, one in five do rarely, and more than half—54%, to be exact—of respondents say they only feel the Sunday scaries sometimes.
The research found that more men than women (14% vs. 3%) have never experienced what such anxiety on Sundays feels like.
Talking about why so many people find Mondays stressful, Magda Klimkiewicz, senior HR business partner at Zety, emphasizes that for most of them, the day marks the start of a new work week. “This transition from a more relaxed routine to the demands and stresses of work obligations can be difficult. It often also means a drastic shift in sleeping patterns, causing fatigue or other physical and mental symptoms,” she told HDR.
“I believe that this transition is what makes Mondays so stressful. The hatred people feel is therefore rooted in the emotional and psychological challenges of adjusting to the new week rather than any inherent qualities of the day itself. It can sometimes also simply be an indication of people not liking their own jobs.”
Even if you don’t hate your job, the shift in sleeping patterns alone can have quite a significant effect on your well-being or your views towards Monday. Delving deeper into that, Professor-in-Residence in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego, Thomas Rutledge, Ph.D., noted that many people follow a significantly different sleep schedule from Monday to Friday than from Friday to Sunday, which can mess with their internal clock and hormone cycles.
According to the expert, the shift in sleep patterns can affect the levels of cortisol—the primary stress hormone in our bodies—that typically rise one to two hours before a person wakes up for school or work, as well as the levels of melatonin that usually peak in the evenings as the person goes to bed before another day at school or work.
Dr. Rutledge continued to point out that “Many other hormones partly regulated by circadian mechanisms such as estrogen, testosterone, growth hormone, thyroid hormone, insulin, and other appetite hormones all scramble to catch up.
“These hormone cycles have profound effects not only on our feelings of well-being but even on the function of our internal organs. Therefore, when we’re out of alignment with our natural sleep schedules, we become vulnerable to a host of negative physical and psychological consequences.”
Following an “all-over-the-place” sleep schedule, Mondays become difficult to bear, as “our cortisol levels are now peaking during our commute to work and across the morning instead of before waking up. Increased stress and negative affect are the subjective results,” the expert explained.
Whether you hate Mondays or not, we all could use a pick-me-up every once in a while. So we hope these posts brought some cheer to your Monday and wish you a productive week. Don’t make too big of a mess with your sleep schedule by the end of it!