If you experience Sunday blues yourself, there are a few things you can start doing to try to manage it and reduce its impact.
- Try to reflect on why you’re experiencing these feelings: have you always had them? What do you think is the root cause? If you’re not enjoying your job, what can you do? Who can you speak to? Are your self-imposed expectations or ambitions unrealistic? It might be useful to reflect on all of these things and write down your reflections or talk to someone.
- Put some thought into how you plan your weekend. Our research found that we tend to experience an energy “slump” on Sunday evenings that might be connected with the wind-down of intentional weekend activities: can you plan something for Sunday evenings that will take your mind off work and avoid that energy drop? Use our Weekend Energy Planner tool to help.
- Next time you start to worry about work on a Sunday evening, find some time to work through our Sunday Night Worries tool.
This will guide you through evidence-based methods of tackling your worries so that you can make the most of your weekend. - Make some changes to your Friday work routine. One of the main causes of Sunday blues is unfinished tasks, so set aside time on a Friday to get yourself organised and finish anything that would otherwise be hanging over you on the weekend. Take a few minutes at the end of the day to write a to-do list for next week.
- You can also make changes to your Mondays, or discuss this with your line manager. If you have a regular Monday meeting that causes you stress at the weekend, can this meeting be moved to later in the week or otherwise changed? Direct your line manager to the advice further down this page to see what they can do.