10 Simple Habits That Quietly Make Mondays Actually Bearable

If you’re applying minimalism to your life, you’ve no doubt been trying to remove the non-essential. Everyone’s version of minimalism is different, but for me this has meant eliminating busyness that’s just for the sake of being busy. Instead of workaholism, I’ve been striving to practice a leisurely attitude of my life.

Even after making this change I was still surprised to find that I had a nagging sense of dislike for Mondays. I knew it was irrational because my Monday was not all that different from other days of the week. Somehow, though, I had internalized the idea that it was the worst day of the week, and so my brain made it so.

Reflecting on this got me wondering why we all hate Mondays so much. I thought I’d explore a few of the ideas here and see what you think.

In the end, it’s not that important whether you nail the exact reason down or not. But I’m the kind of person that likes to know why things are the way they are, and so I’m glad to share these ideas with you.

The good news is that identifying the causes sheds light on the solution. So I’ll also share some tips that have helped me to lighten up my Mondays and not dread them nearly so much.

Before we start, I want to remember that the solution to disliking Mondays isn’t going to a place where you never have to do work again and can live a life of luxury. That kind of mindset will just make you even unhappier, because compared to a life of pure pleasure-seeking even your good days now will look worse.

A thoughtful approach to life means that you shape your expectations to align with reality. And in reality, life is full of hard work and good work and meaningful work. But it’s also full of things that we don’t always feel like doing or that we’d prefer not to do at a given moment. Cultivation a mentality that embraces challenge is, in my view, the healthier approach.

We lose freedom

On the weekend most of us have a lot more unstructured time compared to a weekday. We spend our time doing things because we want to, and this element of choice adds an important dimension of freedom to our lives. It’s not that Monday is all that bad, it’s just a lot less choice than what we have on the weekend.

It’s a busy day

Monday is often the busiest day of the week. It’s when a lot of meetings are held, projects are kicked off, and planning takes place. This makes sense if you think about it as being the start of the week, but it also makes it more hectic and draining than usual.

We pre-emptively dislike it

One thing I’ve learned in my life is that if you go into something with a negative attitude, there’s a very good chance you’re going to have a bad time. You will instinctively look for examples of why you’re suffering, and feel worse when you don’t like something. The same applies to Mondays, we are told it’s the worst day of the week, and so we make it so.

It’s a long drive ahead

Oftentimes, the hardest part of a long drive is just getting started. If you have a 10 hour drive ahead of you, it just seems daunting to get started, because once you do, you know you’re going to have to keep it up for such a long time. I think there’s a similar feeling that can happen when we wake up on a Monday morning. We know we need to be productive all day long, and in fact all week long, and it’s just so much easier not to start.

Longing for the weekend

Even if you lead an interesting and meaningful life, it’s not uncommon to have a case of the Mondays. Unfortunately, most of us don’t decide to be happy in the moment we’re living, but rather long for our idea of perfect happiness in the future. That means while you’re in the week, you’re longing for the weekend, but then on the weekend you might be thinking of something even more exciting like a vacation or retirement. All that longing makes your current reality seem worse than it actually is.

You’ve got an inner rebel

Most of us have a bit of an inner rebel inside of us. This is the part of you that hates being told what to do. Even if you love your job, there is a whole host of expectations and requirements placed on your time that you don’t get to decide. On your free days, you get to decide what you do and who you do it with, but on most of the weekdays that’s a bit more out of your hands. If your inner rebel is extra rebellious, you might really find it hard to switch back into work mode on Monday morning.

Having your own version of fun gets pushed back

One thing I’ve noticed is that my fun and leisure as an adult is not the same as fun and leisure was to me as a child. Today, when I think about my ideal day, it might involve interesting work, good food, and stimulating conversations with people I love. All of those things happen more easily when I’m not working and so when Monday mornings roll around, I know that many of my favorite activities will need to be pushed back until the evenings or weekends.

Now that we have an assortment of reasons why people don’t like Mondays, let’s think through some solutions for lightening your week and making the transition from weekend to weekday a little more palatable.

Mentally prepare in advance

Part of the reason Monday feels so jarring is that we’ve probably been in a different mindset for a couple of days. We’ve been allowing ourselves to enjoy life and relax a little more, and then boom, Monday morning hits and it’s time to be productive, work towards goals, and get focused. One small step that can help is to start mentally prepping yourself. Sometimes, for example, I find it useful to lay out my clothes on Sunday night before bed so that when I wake up I can immediately jump back into work.

Start the day with something pleasant

For me, I have started to associate coffee with work. I don’t drink coffee unless I’m working, and so when I make that first cup in the morning it’s an enjoyable signal to my brain that a productive day of work is ahead of me. This is a small reward I use to make starting work on a Monday a little better. Perhaps there’s something like this that you can build into your day so that you have something to look forward to when you wake up.

Reduce the stakes

Make Monday an easy day relative to the rest of the week. You can do this by purposefully carrying over some of your Monday work into the following week. The idea here is to create an easy onramp into the work week that doesn’t feel nearly so jarring.

Go to bed early

I know some of you out there like to live it up on Friday night and Saturday night, but by the time Sunday night comes around, it’s probably a good idea to wind down a bit earlier. This will give you a jump start on the beginning of the week, where it’s important to get going fast.

Be kind to yourself

I find that a lot of my dislike of Mondays comes from the fact that I place such high expectations on myself. After a weekend of relative leisure, I expect myself to jump in and be highly productive right out of the gate, like some kind of productivity robot. But I find that it’s more useful to meet myself where I’m at. On Monday, I might start a bit slower and take more breaks than usual to ease into the week.

Recalibrate your expectations

I think one of the worst things we can do is start thinking that we should be able to do whatever we want at all times. In today’s world of technology and comfort and convenience, that’s not even a crazy thing to think. So much of our life is easy and enjoyable compared to the lives of our ancestors. But if we expect things to always be easy, then any bit of hard work or challenge that comes our way is going to feel like it’s unfair. Instead, I try to remind myself that hard work is good, and that life is not meant to be easy at all times. This recalibrates my expectations back to reality.

Don’t wait for the perfect day

I think a lot of people expect that one day things will be easier, or that they’ll get their act together and be more productive. Until that day comes, though, they’re just going to continue to dream about the future and waste their present time. When I see myself doing that I try to remind myself: what’s stopping me from doing those good things today? There’s really no reason to wait until tomorrow or some future date to do those things that I’m putting off.

Start with something easy, but productive

When I’m facing a bit of resistance towards doing what I know I need to do, I’ll sometimes start with an easy task that gets me going in the right direction. This helps to lower the activation energy that’s needed to get started, but also helps to build a bit of momentum for the rest of the day.

Schedule something fun

I’m a big fan of planning moments of happiness and delight into your day, instead of playing the martyr and thinking that you need to get all of your work done before you have any fun. Sometimes we do this just to procrastinate, but it doesn’t have to be. Scheduling a reward for after you get a certain amount of work done can be a great way to motivate yourself to get the ball rolling on Mondays.

Embrace the season

Sometimes in life, the best thing you can do is stop fighting reality and just embrace it. There might be things about your job that you don’t love, but that doesn’t mean you can’t jump into them with as much gusto as you can muster. I find that sometimes we feel sorry for ourselves or complain, that makes things worse. Instead, we can choose to embrace the many phases of life and squeeze out every bit of goodness that we can.

In conclusion, Monday vibes don’t come out of nowhere. They can be traced back to predictable aspects of our lives that we can learn to proactively manage instead of reactively dealing with. A little bit of forethought and an experimental mindset can go along way to making nearly any problem intractable. You’ll be amazed how powerful you can feel once you begin to tackle some of the psychological challenges that have been holding you back.