According to a recent survey, an estimated 76% of workers suffer from the ‘Sunday evening blues’ at the end of the weekend. It seems that most people are wrapped up in work mode, checking emails, and generally putting themselves back in the mental state that they occupy for most of the week.
Whereas around a quarter of workers are out there enjoying their weekends to the max, so what are they doing differently? Read on to find out.
It starts on Friday
Give yourself more chance to enjoy the weekend, make sure you leave the office on Friday where you are completely organised. Try to finish as much as possible, rather than leaving it for Monday. As you prepare to leave the office on Friday, create a to-do list for the following Monday. Leave the office with nothing on your mind, ensuring that there’s nothing to make you anxious about returning.
Think Positive
One of the crucial things to avoid is thinking about the amount of work you have to do on Monday. People who still have the freedom in their weekends are able to stop these thoughts. They remind themselves how well they’ve managed this workload in the past. So rather than focussing on what could go wrong, they remembered what went right.
Relax
There can often be this weight of expectation that your day of relaxing is Sunday. So if Sunday is busier than planned, and you’re running errands all day, it can leave you even more exhausted when the working week arrives. The solution is to ensure you have at least a couple of hours to wind down every night, reducing the burden of relaxing for just one day a week.
Work out the issues
If you are experiencing a feeling of unease on Sunday then it’s important to work out why you might be feeling this way. Is your commute always stressful? Have you got an intense workload every Monday? What’s the environment like at work? If you can identify the issues and what’s causing them, you’ll have more opportunity to reduce them.
If you’ve tried everything on this list and nothing seems to be helping, it may be a sign that you need to look for a new role.