As workloads mount, people struggle to tame the pre-Monday dread spiral
By Ray A. Smith
Jill Davis's official work week starts Monday morning. Unofficially, it kicks off every Sunday afternoon when, like clockwork, anxious thoughts begin seeping into her brain.
"Am I organized and ready enough? Am I prepared for this meeting?" says Davis, the chief development officer at a nonprofit. To bat the angst away, she'll often launch into work, writing emails and saving them as drafts so she doesn't disturb her colleagues.
Chances are they're already fretting about work, too. The "Sunday scaries" have become such a fixture of Americans' weekends that Merriam-Webster added the term to its online dictionary last month. Its definition: a feeling of anxiety or sadness one may feel when the weekend is almost over, either because the work/school week is about to begin, there is no more time for fun or relaxing weekend activities, or both.
That pre-Monday dread isn't a new phenomenon, but there's reason to believe it's intensifying as workloads mount and job security ebbs. More than half of U.S. workers say they experience the Sunday scaries, according to an October survey of 2,100 people by job platform FlexJobs. Having a list of unfinished tasks hanging over them was the most commonly cited cause.
It's only a matter of time before the scaries ruin Saturday too, turning it into a day to dread the dread we'll feel on Sunday.
For Davis, the jitters so consumed her Sundays that she bought a $30 hourglass to rein them in. It takes an hour for the sand to run through it -- the maximum amount of time she now lets herself work, or even think about work.
On a recent Sunday, "when it ran out, I got up and I left and went in the other room," she said.
Effectively treating the Sunday scaries without causing negative side effects is a delicate balancing act. It requires being busy enough to ease the stress but not the kind of busy that drags everyone down.
It appears we're getting worse at that.
The share of Sundays that employees devoted to work messaging and chats was about 12% last year, compared with 6.6% in 2023, according to data compiled for The Wall Street Journal by workforce analytics firm ActivTrak.
"People feel like they have to toil away harder in order to make sure they don't get fired," said Angie Callen, an executive coach and author of "Scary Good: Discovering Life Beyond the Sunday Scaries." Her advice? Ask yourself honestly why you are engaging with work on a Sunday. Will you get a positive return on your time?
"You don't have to settle for the Sunday scaries," said Callen. "We let Mondays ruin our Sundays. Stop."
Joanna Johnston, a longtime tech executive, used to combat her Sunday scaries by getting up as early as 6 a.m. to squeeze in an hour of Monday prep work, then putting in more time in the evenings.
When she sent Slack and other messages, it was usually to a peer or in response to a manager. But she didn't always adhere to the unwritten rules of weekend communication with subordinates.
"I'm sure before I became more sensitive to the intrusion this caused, I did it to my direct reports and broader team as well," said Johnston, who retired from corporate roles in June and now coaches executives.
Despite the career shift, she's still working on Sundays. "I think I just have a problem," she laughed.
Until a few years ago, Chris Keller ran his own marketing agency and often worked seven days a week. Now in a corporate role, he limits himself to two hours on early Sunday mornings to prepare for the week. Otherwise, "I know it could get away from me really quickly," said Keller, marketing chief at a credit union who recently became a father.
Keller said he will typically use the time to dictate notes to prepare for meetings.
"It's been very helpful to be able to get things out of my brain," he said.
Do psychiatrists approve?
If doing some work on Sunday will relieve you of feeling behind or overwhelmed on Monday, it's OK, just set guardrails, said Kia-Rai Prewitt, a psychiatrist with Cleveland Clinic's Behavioral Health.
"If I can just log in really quick and respond to this email, that's all I'm going to do," she said. "You have to set the boundary and say, 'I'm not going to respond to other emails.'"
Others recommend exhausting all options to avoid work altogether.
Consider spending a little more time at work on Friday "so you can officially be done" or getting to work a little earlier on Monday "so that you're not going to be behind the eight ball," said Amy Cooper Hakim, an industrial organizational psychologist. "There's always a way to shift those same extra minutes."
If all else fails, try a rebrand. Davis, the Sunday afternoon worrier, worked with an executive coach who helped her reimagine the "Sunday scaries" as "Monday maybe." The idea is to approach Monday with curiosity rather than thinking everything has to be buttoned-up and perfect by then.
"I'm trying to release the pressure of what's so special about everything getting done before Monday," she said. "I sleep better on Sunday nights."