Ditch the Sunday Scaries
I used to get that feeling almost every week. You know the one – it comes around 3pm on a Sunday afternoon when, even after a great weekend, your stomach starts to clench and your shoulders start climbing up to your ears.
Those Sunday Scaries are sneaky buggers.
They feel inevitable, and yet they’re highly avoidable. Over time, I’ve found that the Sunday Scaries generally come down to one of these things:
Your work is in chaos.
When our work is a mess, we can’t help but resist going back to it because that mess is waiting for us. Here are two ways to manage the mess:
Create your Monday or full-week gameplan on Friday. It prevents stress creep over the weekend if you already know which way the winds are blowing on Monday.
Start one or two of the big things for the coming week on Friday, even if only in the smallest way. Need to write a report? Open a document, title it, and write down three thoughts that will jog your memory when you come back to it. Starting can be the hardest part, so when Monday comes around, it won’t feel like such a mountain to climb knowing you’ve already begun.
You’re dreading or avoiding something.
Maybe it’s that meeting with a client who always complains no matter what you do. Or maybe someone you work with isn’t getting the job done and you have to address it with them. Schedule time for yourself during the week to work through how you want to handle it so that you’re not saddled with figuring it out over your weekend. And like meditation, practice moving your thoughts away from the event if you find yourself drifting over to thoughts about it on the weekend.
You aren’t doing YOUR work, and your spirit is rebelling.
Sure, I could say – just go find your dream job. Poof! All better! But it’s rarely that easy. Even if you know you’re not doing what you’re meant to do, those change can take time. Here are a few questions to ask yourself to start moving in that direction:
What would it take to make a change from what you’re doing to what you WANT to do? Really think this through and get very specific. Many times, that change seems impossible in our minds, but when we sit down to really map it out, we can find a path forward.
If a major change in your work isn’t possible at the moment, what small change within the same work would make it more bearable? Figure out what specific requests you could make of the people around you to make that happen and make that ask. And in the meantime, keep revisiting the question above.
What can you do to ditch the Sunday Scaries?
