Six steps to overcome the Monday blues

You might go one step further – with feelings of sadness, anxiety or stress on a Monday morning. Your passion for work has gone and you feel sluggish and reluctant to leave the door.

If any of this sounds like you, then you have a bad case of Monday Blues. There are some ways to deal with this – which you should do as soon as you recognise the symptoms. Left for too long and Monday Blues can extend to Tuesday and beyond. So, let’s look at some ways to take control now.

#1 What is the problem?

Although there are a million memes to suggest Monday morning blues is typical, it is probably best not to accept it. You first need to stop and consider what is so wrong that you can’t just laugh it off. You may think you can live with it and just wait for the first coffee to kick in. If so, no problems at all. However, if not, you may need to find a new job or speak to your manager about the issues that make you dread walking through the door.

#2 Prepare on Friday not Sunday

Get everything ready for Monday on Friday, so you feel in control. If you have stuff piling up at the end of a Friday, don’t leave it behind. Consider how you can rethink that to-do list, so it is not there on Monday. Make it a part of your schedule to have one hour at the end of Friday decluttering your workload and understanding how the week to come will go.

#3 Remind yourself what excites you about your job

The small jobs we do each day can feel so mundane. There is no surer way to feel like you are a hamster on a wheel than getting lost in the minutiae of your role. Sit down with a piece of paper and write your grand vision for your work and your purpose.

If this sounds too much – just write down three moments in the week to come that you can look forward to.

#4 The weekend is yours

If you cannot refresh at the weekend and do something completely different, then you will find Monday morning a slog. Returning to the office or workplace on a Monday morning after a couple of hard days of work at home, then you are going to feel sluggish. You might even feel resentful. Leave the office, production line, construction site where it is and build a protective, metaphorical wall around your home. Your home, your time: protect it.

Here is a radical tip to achieve this: switch your out of office responder onto your emails. Then, you will never know what work is coming through in your time.

#5 Invest in confidence

If you need to feel good on a Monday morning, invest in clothes that will make you feel more confident and in charge. Fake it until you make it can work wonders for a low mood in the workplace. The first set of compliments you receive should help you shake off some of those blues.

#6 Do something for someone else

The reason to pay forward is to help someone else. At its best, this is a selfless act. However, usually, it works to make us feel better when we are unhappy with ourselves. Take some biscuits for the admin staff. Buy the milk for the week. Offer to do some of the morning set up work, if the person responsible is feeling sluggish too. Who cares if you do it to shake off your blues, if you are helping someone lose their blues, too?

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