5 Tips to Beat the Sunday Scaries
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ What the Sunday Scaries are and who they affect
⋒ 5 tips to help you kick the Sunday Scaries for good so you can have a healthy relationship with Mondays
⋒ Examples of habits you can implement to support you as you plan and start your week
What are the Sunday Scaries? I feel like it’s a common phrase these days but if you’ve never heard of it, let’s break it down. I got this definition from Headspace’s website – if you’ve never heard of Headspace, it’s a really rad guided meditation app.
According to Headspace’s website, the Sunday Scaries (or Sunday blues, as they're sometimes called) are feelings of anxiety or dread that happen the day before heading back to work. According to a LinkedIn survey, 80 percent of professionals say they experience the Sunday Scaries, with over 90 percent of Millennials and Gen Z reporting they feel it.
That is a massive number of people who are struggling with this! Which is exactly why I wanted to create this blog post. This episode was also inspired by my bestie – she asked me a few months ago for tips when the Sunday Scaries were creeping in.
And here’s the thing – she’s a fellow business owner and loves what she does! The Sunday Scaries don’t just come for people who don’t enjoy their jobs. I think anyone can experience Sunday Scaries – entrepreneurs, 9-5ers, stay-at-home moms… the Sunday Scaries don’t discriminate.
So if you feel a sense of anxiousness or dread on Sundays, hopefully, some of these tips can help you kick the Sunday Scaries in the booty so you can reclaim a healthy relationship with Mondays!
5 Tips to Beat the Sunday Scaries
01. Do your weekly prep meeting before Sunday.
This is the most simple tip ever but honestly, it was such a game-changer for me. But let me back up and talk about what a weekly prep meeting is, in case you’re new around here.
A weekly prep meeting is one of the 7 Hustle Sanely Habits that sets you up to live a peacefully productive life all year long. It’s a meeting that you have with yourself once a week to map out the following week. The purpose of it is to help you plan out where you’re going to spend your time and energy – like what scheduled events are coming up, what your top 3 priority tasks are, etc.
Most people tend to do this prep meeting on Sundays. And I used to do mine on Sundays, too.
But I noticed that I would be thinking about the following week ALL weekend, starting on Friday evenings and it was kind of just casually hanging out in my mind, taking up space and causing a little bit of stress. I didn’t like not knowing what was coming up until the day before the fresh week.
So one day I was like, “Hmm I wonder what would happen if I started my weekend with my weekly prep meeting instead of ending my weekend with it?”
Now I do my weekly prep meetings as my last work task of the week and it is glorious. Not only am I able to fully enjoy my weekend, knowing that I’m planned and prepped for the following week, but now I actually enjoy the weekly prep meeting itself instead of feeling like it’s this big looming to-do.
I don’t work Fridays so on Thursday afternoon when it’s time to shut down work for the week, I pull out my planner, Google Cal, and ClickUp and prep for the following week – I usually play some lofi music and sip on a fun drink, too – it’s a vibe and it’s the best.
I’m not even joking – ever since moving my weekly prep meeting to Thursday afternoons, I have not struggled with the Sunday Scaries one single time.
So if you struggle with Sunday Scaries, try moving your weekly prep meeting to a new day to see how that works for you!
02. Spread your chores throughout the week so it doesn’t feel like Sunday is all about chores.
Another thing I used to do on Sundays was a full-on deep clean of the house and it usually took me 2-3 hours. Knowing that I was going to have to dedicate that big of a chunk of my last weekend day to cleaning really bummed me out. And honestly, I’d usually push the cleaning til the end of the day on Sunday (because hi, I procrastinate sometimes, too) which meant I was spending the last part of my weekend before heading into the work week cleaning, which left me feeling super exhausted as I went into Sunday evening and of course, that’s gonna open the doors for the Sunday Scaries to pop up.
Now, as I’m sure you know, I do my daily Hustle Sanely 5 habits and one of those is tidy for 15 minutes. What this looks like for me is spending 15 minutes every day focused on tidying/cleaning one room of our house. And listen, I know 15 minutes doesn’t sound like a whole lot of time to get a room clean but if you set a timer and focus, you’d be amazed at how much you can get done in 15 minutes!
Ever since dedicating 15 minutes a day to cleaning, my weekend deep clean time is a fraction of what it used to be. I can deep clean our whole house in 30-45 minutes now. It’s incredible. And I know I recently shared my tidy for 15 schedule on the show but it fits well here, too, and I’ve made a few tweaks, so I’m gonna share it again:
Monday: bedroom + bathroom
Tuesday: guest bath + laundry room
Wednesday: kitchen
Thursday: office + nursery
Friday: whole house tidy (home reset routine)
Saturday: living + dining room
I’m able to clear clutter, wipe surfaces, and vaccum/swiffer the floors in each of these rooms in 15 minutes.
So on Fridays when I’m doing my Home Reset Routine (which I need to do a whole episode just on that) and I walk through the house and see what needs to be done, it takes hardly any time at all.
If you’re currently saving all of your cleaning for the weekend, especially Sundays, try using the HS5 tidy for 15 minutes method – it’s been a game changer in our home and in helping me not struggle with Sunday Scaries!
03. Make your Sundays a vibe.
And by “a vibe” – I don’t mean it has to be over the top or aesthetic to count. I’m just saying to choose a part of your Sunday, whether that’s morning, afternoon, or evening, to do something special.
Like you know how sometimes people have the “special china” that they only use when guests come over? Think of this like a little ritual that is specially reserved for Sundays only.
Examples:
~ Morning:
Maybe every Sunday morning you make cinnamon rolls with your fam for breakfast – it’s something special that y’all look forward to as a family every Sunday.
~ Afternoon:
Maybe every Sunday afternoon after church, you go to your favorite coffee shop and get your fave drink to sip on while you go to a park and swing in your hammock while you read.
~ Evening:
Maybe every Sunday evening you take a bubble bath and spend extra time on your skincare routine and wear a matching PJ set to bed.
Choose something and make it your little Sunday ritual that you can look forward to every week.
I think it could be strategic to have something special planned for Sunday evenings since that’s when Sunday Scaries tend to creep in but that might not work for everyone’s schedule and that’s okay, just carve out some time on Sunday to do something special every week that hypes you up.
Having something that you’re stoked about on Sunday might keep those Sunday Scaries from taking over your thoughts while you’re just out here trying to live your life, ya know?
04. Sprinkle self-care throughout the whole week.
This tip is a good follow-up to number 3!
Y’all know that I’m all about weaving self-care into our day-to-day so that we are operating from a place of peace and rest. A lot of the time, people tend to think that self-care has to be this big ordeal that takes up a ton of time and energy but that doesn’t always have to be how it goes down. You can use what we call in the Hustle Sanely community self-care sprinkles to make sure you feel supported all the time.
A self-care sprinkle is what it sounds like, it’s doing small things for yourself regularly that help you honor your time and/or energy so you can operate as the healthiest version of yourself as often as possible.
There’s a reason why “say or do one kind thing for yourself” is one of the daily Hustle Sanely 5 habits!
Some examples of self-care sprinkles:
~ Going on a walk during your lunch break
~ Calling a friend to chat on your way home from work
~ Take an extra long shower
~ Take a nap
~ Have a phone-free evening
The way that I determine what self-care sprinkles to weave into my days is by pausing and asking myself, “What would make me feel supported today?” I ask that question in the mornings and then again anytime throughout the day when I feel like I need an intentional pause.
If you want to take this tip to the next level, I recommend having a special self-care sprinkle that is reserved for Mondays that you’re stoked about.
Maybe every Monday you pick up a coffee before work instead of making it at home.
Maybe every Monday you go to the library after work to pick out a new read for the week.
Maybe every Monday you and your partner have a date night.
Don’t just depend on the weekend to fill your self-care tank – that’s how we get into the rut of living for the weekends. Make your day-to-day life something that lights you up and that you’re excited to live by sprinkling self-care throughout each day!
05. Get to the root of where your Sunday Scaries are stemming from.
Okay, so the first 4 tips are more surface-level focused – maybe you do really love your job, you feel like you have mostly supportive habits and routines built into your days and weeks to support you, but you just need a little boost to help you overcome the Sunday Scaries.
But sometimes it really does go deeper than that and those other 4 tips that I suggested aren’t going to be enough to help you overcome the dread that is hanging over your head on Sundays.
This is when you have to go within and do some inner work to get to the root of where your Sunday Scaries are stemming from.
My favorite way to do inner work, as I’m sure you’re not shocked by, is through journaling.
So I would do an onion-style journaling exercise here to help me peel back the layers of where this Sunday stress is coming from.
Ask yourself questions like these:
When do I start feeling the Sunday Scaries come on?
Why do I start feeling anxious that time of day?
What kinds of thoughts are running through my mind when I’m experiencing feelings of Sunday Scaries?
Am I dreading going to work?
Do I feel like my weekly schedule is chaos and doesn’t support me?
Do I have a flow for how I want my days to go so that I’m showing up as my healthiest self?
When we do this kind of thing and act like detectives in our own lives, we’re able to get to the root of where something is coming from and pull it up and out. If you just keep trimming something at the surface when it’s really an underlying issue, it’s never going to be resolved.
So to recap:
01. Do your weekly prep meeting before Sunday.
02. Spread your chores throughout the week so it doesn’t feel like Sunday is all about chores.
03. Make your Sunday evenings a vibe.
04. Sprinkle self-care throughout the whole week and have a special one planned for Mondays.
05. Get to the root of where your Sunday Scaries are stemming from.
Let me know over on Instagram by sharing this episode to your stories and tagging me @jessmmassey which tip helped you the most! And hey you never know – maybe trying some of these tips will have you actually looking forward to Mondays!
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