Weekend Hacks To Get You Through The Week Ahead
“Sunday scaries” is a form of anticipatory anxiety which involves nervousness and dread about the week ahead.
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It’s Sunday and you wake up feeling good knowing you don’t have to work today.
But the dread of the coming work week eventually creeps and the cycle begins.
Your feelings are valid and this form of anticipatory anxiety has a name. It’s called the “Sunday scaries” and it can make you feel nervous and dread something that hasn’t happened yet: the week ahead.
Although commonly experienced on a Sunday, it can happen any day of the week depending on your schedule, whether work or school.
Chasing the ‘scaries’ away
You know what? It’s pretty common! You can either be part of the majority of people who experience this Sunday anxiety, or you can do something about it.
(1) Do the worst first – The sooner you do the things you don’t want to (e.g. laundry, bills, general chores etc…) the sooner that looming feeling will go away.
Now that most Friday nights are homebound, why not get them done then? That way you wake up Saturday morning feeling relaxed.
(2) Dedicate Sunday to relaxing activities ONLY – What’s your preferred way to relax? Could be anything from yoga, meditation to reading or sleeping.
Also, consider reducing your news intake because, in our current climate of pandemic and politically related news, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
Disconnecting from the world now and then is important because just as you need the weekend to break from work, you also need to break from the reality outside your home.
(3) Make Mondays a special occasion – Having something to look forward to on Mondays can take the edge off some dread. Use the weekend to make a plan with your friends for a Monday catch-up.
Or if you’re on a diet, use the day as a “cheat day” to treat yourself to something sinfully delicious.
(4) Plan your week – Scheduling things to do the week ahead may lighten the load you feel of the “unknown.”
If your weekdays are unpredictable, plan something easier to control – like blocking out an hour a day of your workday for a “meeting” with yourself to take a breather and work on your big-picture goals.
(5) Meal Prep – The thought of meal prepping is a headache in itself. But going back to “do the worst first”, meal prepping not only saves you the effort prepping your meals for the week ahead, it can be nutritious which could also improve your mood.
But if you aren’t one for meal-prepping, you could instead decide what you are going to eat in the week which will save you the time from deciding.
Meatless Monday, Thai Tuesday, Western Wednesday, you get the idea.
The bottom line is there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the Sunday scaries but there are ways to make them more tolerable. Do what works for you but don’t let the thought of Monday steal your Sunday.
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