Sunday scaries: why Sunday dread happens and how to ease it

The Sunday scaries are the anxious, heavy feeling that creeps in on Sunday afternoon or evening as the workweek gets close. They usually ease when Monday stops being a looming unknown: plan Monday before you leave work on Friday, give Sunday evening a calm routine of its own, and keep work email out of the weekend.

The feeling is common enough to have a nickname, and on its own it isn't a sign that something is wrong with you or your job. Sometimes, though, it is a message worth hearing, and the last section is about telling the two apart.

Why do the Sunday scaries happen?

A few things tend to pile up at the same time.

• Anticipation is often worse than the event. Your mind runs through the week ahead in its least forgiving version. The real Monday is usually more ordinary than the one you picture on Sunday night.
• Open loops from Friday. If you left work mid-task, with an unanswered email or a decision you didn't make, your mind keeps returning to it all weekend, loudest when Monday is close.
• The end of something good. Part of the feeling is plain loss. The weekend is ending, and that would feel flat even if you loved your job.
• A peek at the inbox. One glance at work email on Sunday afternoon pulls the whole week forward by a day.
• A shifted body clock. Late nights and sleeping in on the weekend can make it hard to fall asleep on Sunday night, and lying awake is when worries get loud. Sleep researchers call this mismatch between workday and weekend sleep social jet lag.

None of these needs a dramatic fix. Most respond to a little planning at the end of the week and a little structure at the end of the weekend.

How to stop the Sunday scaries: plan Monday on Friday

The most useful single habit is to make Monday concrete before you leave on Friday. Ten minutes is enough.

1. Write down every open loop. Anything you are carrying in your head: the reply you owe, the bug you half fixed, the thing your manager mentioned in passing. Out of your head and onto a list.
2. Pick Monday's first task. Just one, worded so you could start it half asleep: "draft the intro to the quarterly report", not "report".
3. Look at Monday's calendar. Know which meetings are coming so none of them surprises you, and prepare anything that needs it now rather than on Sunday.
4. Send the messages you'd otherwise worry about. A short "I'll get back to you on Monday morning" closes the loop for both of you.
5. Close everything. Quit your apps, so Monday starts on a clean screen.

This is the Friday version of a daily shutdown ritual. On Monday morning you sit down and start the task you picked, without having spent Sunday rehearsing it.

A Sunday evening routine that helps

Then give Sunday evening a shape that belongs to you, not to Monday. A routine you look forward to leaves less room for dread.

• Do the practical things early. Laundry, groceries, the bag for Monday. Get them done by mid-afternoon so they don't hang over the evening.
• Plan something pleasant for the evening. A favorite meal, a walk at dusk, a movie, a call with someone you like. Something that makes Sunday evening worth having on its own terms.
• Put something good in Monday. Lunch with a colleague, a walk at noon, coffee from the place you like. One thing that makes Monday about more than work.
• Name one good thing from the weekend before bed, so it closes on what went well instead of what is coming.
• Go to bed at your weekday time. It is the simplest fix for Sunday night sleeplessness, and Monday feels very different after a full night's sleep.

If the worry still arrives, write it down. Put each worry on its own line, add one thing you could do about it on Monday, and close the notebook. Thoughts that are written down tend to circle less.

How to keep work email out of the weekend on a Mac

The weekend can't do its job if work keeps leaking into it. If you have a separate work Mac, shut it down on Friday and put it somewhere you won't see it. If one Mac does both, a few settings help. The same goes for your phone: work mail there undoes everything below.

Switch the work account off

Open System Settings > Internet Accounts, pick the work account, and turn off Mail and Calendars. Work mail and meetings vanish from Mail and Calendar until you switch them back on first thing Monday. It takes seconds and removes the pull of an unread count.

Schedule a weekend Focus

In System Settings > Focus, add a Focus for the weekend, or use Personal. Under Set a Schedule, add one that runs on Saturday and Sunday, and under Allowed Notifications leave your work apps out. Further down the same page, Focus Filters can hide your work account in Mail and your work calendars in Calendar for as long as that Focus is on, if your version of macOS offers them. Working on weekends has more ways to hold the line.

Don't send weekend email either

Anything you do write over the weekend can wait in Mail until Monday. In recent versions, the small arrow beside the Send button offers Send Later, where you choose a time on Monday morning. That keeps your weekend work from becoming someone else's Sunday scaries.

Where Notchpals fits

Notchpals can't make Monday lighter, but three of its moments land at the times this post is about.

• Friday's wrap-up. If your crew has a Schedule character, it drops by once each weekday early in the evening to say the workday is done. On Fridays, let it trigger the ten-minute Monday plan.
• Weekend work. Put in 45 minutes at the Mac on a weekend day and the same character comes once to suggest you stop.
• Sunday evening. The Self-care character's One good thing moment runs every evening from 6 to 9 PM, Sundays included, which makes it a natural close to the weekend.

With Walter the walrus as your Schedule character, the weekend nudge is short and grumpy:

WalterWeekend work. Hmph. The sea gets calm days. You should too.

With Clover in the Self-care spot, the evening moment is softer:

CloverEnd of the day! Pick one nice moment and keep it in your pocket.

None of them knows what Monday holds, and none records your answers. They turn up at the moments when a small habit is easiest to start, and you press Done or Later and carry on.

When is it more than the Sunday scaries?

A mild dip on Sunday evening is normal. It is worth paying closer attention if:

• the dread starts on Saturday morning, or stays with you through the whole week,
• it comes with physical signs such as a racing heart, a churning stomach or poor sleep most nights,
• it is tied to something specific at work, like a manager you are afraid of, bullying, or a workload nobody could meet,
• you feel anxious or low on most days, not only on Sundays.

Then the problem isn't Sunday. It may be the job, the workload or your health, and each has its own fix. Take the workload question to your manager or HR, and see a doctor or therapist if anxiety or low mood is spreading into the rest of the week. Sometimes the dread is telling you, accurately, that something needs to change, and the most useful thing a Sunday ritual can do is give you a calm enough evening to hear it.