A Simple Solution to the “Sunday Scaries”

In the United States, the week starts on Sunday:

In Latin America, the week starts on Monday:

Living in Latin America, I noticed the “Sunday scaries” don’t seem to exist among the professional population.

By contrast, Americans love to tweet about the Sunday scaries: that feeling of dread in anticipation of the upcoming workweek, looming over you and ruining your weekend.

Growing up in the States, Friday night through Saturday night felt like the true “weekend.” Sundays reset the clock for a whole new week, so they didn’t feel as fun. Even as a kid, I recall feeling something resonant of the Sunday scaries when anticipating school the following day.

On the other hand, Latinos seem to fully embody the weekend all through the day on Sundays. Living in the present moment, enjoying their weekend, they may sleep in, see friends for lunch, and spend all afternoon rollerblading at the park or having happy hour. They aren’t anticipating work the following day. They are in pure Weekend Mode.

At some point in time I wondered: Is this contrast due to the mere distinction in the first day of the week? More importantly, the last day of the week?

There is something about a fresh new week. New beginnings, fresh slate, new goals and a resurgence in energy. We can hit the reset button and cleanse our palette from the last seven days of work, emotions, and interpersonal experiences.

When the week is reset on Saturday at midnight, we wake up on Sunday feeling as if our week has already begun. As the hours of Sunday tick away, we get closer to being 1/7th of the way through our week. “Already?! Now I feel behind on… something!”

So perhaps the week starting on Sunday is the reason we experience the Sunday scaries.

Plus, it’s called a weekend, after all. Why shouldn’t the week end on Sunday, and start on Monday?

This is simply a mental construct, and it mirrors the idea of linguistic relativity. Maybe because Americans think of their week as starting on Sundays, they feel pressure to “get to work” before their workweek starts on Mondays. And maybe because Latinos think of their week as starting on Mondays, they are fully present in their weekend activities all the way through the day on Sunday.

There is something powerful about the passing of one complete week. At the separator, whether it’s Saturday at midnight or Sunday at midnight, “this week” becomes “last week,” and “next week” becomes “this week.”

So, if you experience the Sunday scaries, I have a simple question for you: What if you changed your calendar so that your first day of the week is Monday? What could that do for you?

This stuff is all made up anyway, so you can design your reality how it suits you best.