What are the Sunday Scaries?--Meet the Moment, August 21, 2022

Have you ever had a feeling of encroaching dread that starts around 10:00 am on Sunday morning? Maybe it’s about a stack of ungraded papers, or a tricky meeting on Monday morning. Maybe it’s just the thought of waking up to an alarm when it’s still dark out. 

This feeling is typically called the Sunday scaries or the Sunday blues. (You may also be familiar with an educator-specific variant: August anxiety!) It’s a combination of anticipation and worry focused on the week ahead. The term popped in popularity in 2018, and in a LinkedIn survey from that year, 80% of respondents reported feeling some form of these weekend worries. (It’s worth noting that the younger a professional is, the more likely they are to identify with the phenomenon.)

A few strategies can help manage your worry and protect your weekend time.

• Embrace pleasure. It’s easy to use your weekends to take care of laundry and grocery shopping, but part of what produces Sunday worry is the sense that you haven’t gotten a break that you needed. Make sure you take some time for fun–dinner with friends, a beautiful hike, a book you can’t wait to read.
• Create a ritual to end the weekend. As an Academic Leader, your job is rarely contained by the five days of the school week. Decide when you’ll attack those tasks on Sunday, and before you start, take a few minutes to relish in the space the weekend provides. It can be as simple as a special mug of tea, or a favorite playlist. Drawing a boundary protects your leisure time from your work life.
• Take a few minutes to make a list of the things that are swirling around your mind. This technique is sometimes called a brain dump. When you put your worries on paper, you reduce the part of your anxiety that’s focused on remembering everything you have to worry about–and you give yourself a road map for starting to tackle your tasks when it’s time to do so.

When you identify the Sunday scaries, you can manage them effectively. Monday morning is rarely easy, but you don’t have to spend Sunday worrying about it.