Move, stop quietly. There’s a new workplace trend on the rise and it’s all about relaxing at the start of your work week.
The trend, which is taking off on social media, is called “Bare minimum Monday” and the name makes it pretty easy to decode – it’s about starting your week by doing just enough to be successful.
Popularized on TikTok by user Marisa Jo Mayes (@itsmarisajo), Bare Minimum Monday encourages workers to do as little work as possible on Mondays, even focusing on self-care rituals during the early hours of the day, in an effort to familiarize yourself with the workweek and stave off anxious feelings about the week ahead.
“I don’t take meetings and I slow down for the first two hours. I’m going to do some reading, journaling, maybe stuff at home,” Mayes explained in an essay for Insider. “It’s two hours without tech – no checking emails – just doing what I need to do to feel good about starting my day.”
In her essay, Mayes said she was experiencing “Sunday scares” – a popular term for dreading the week ahead – and wanted something to change.
So do the bare minimum on Monday.
“One day last March, I gave myself permission to do the bare minimum for work, and it felt like a magic spell was going through me. I felt better. I wasn’t overwhelmed, and I actually did more than I expected,” she continued in her essay.
Mayes writes that she received a lot of flak for her Monday ritual, but experts say her approach has merit.
“It’s a real thing,” CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans said. “There are a lot of young workers who say, ‘Listen, Sunday fears are turning into this unproductive, anxious Monday… so they’re focusing a bit on self-care. They come out of the weekend and into the week and say they’re going to do the bare minimum.
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Brooke Duffy, a communication professor at Cornell University who studies the impact of new technologies on work, told ABC News that bare minimum Mondays mark a convergence of many workplace trends introduced during the pandemic, including working from home, blurred boundaries between work and leisure, and a tight labor market.
“It’s a perfect storm of the kind of expression and dissatisfaction that we see on these platforms in a very public way,” she told the outlet. “It’s not just being displayed, but it’s gaining momentum.”
Others, however, argue that Bare Minimum Monday is just another catchy phrase for something that’s been going on for ages.
“Who hasn’t had a hectic, busy weekend and found themselves sitting at their desk on a Monday morning thinking, ‘I just need to survive the next eight hours’ and quietly accepting that it won’t be not the most dynamic day of their career?” Evening Standard columnist Martha Alexander wrote about the trend.
Bare Minimum Mondays follows the “Silent Resignation” and “Big Resignation” trends, which emerged as the COVID-19 virus made its way through society. Long-term shutdowns and the shift to working from home have seen many employees burn out, overwork or quit their jobs.
A 2021 study commissioned by Workplace Strategies for Mental Health and conducted by Mental Health Research Canada found that more than a third of Canadians felt burnt out at work, citing symptoms of burnout, negativity, cynicism and efficiency. reduced to work.
The study also found that few Canadians said they felt supported at work and only a third said their company is committed to providing a low-stress workplace.
A new study, released earlier this week, also found that a large majority (91%) of senior executives in Canada would support a four-day work week for their team and that most expect their company to move to a shorter workweek over the next five years.
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The survey, carried out by recruitment firm Robert Half, also found that nearly 75% of respondents said they would be willing to work four 10-hour days in exchange for an extra day off. A majority also reported a preference for hybrid work models, where some time is spent working from home.
“When it comes to hybrid and remote, the day can be different. You can have a sold-out job, you can drop your kids off at school, you can pick them up, practice football on Tuesdays, coaching the hockey team on Thursdays. And that’s become very, very important to parents,” Robert Half national manager Michael French told Global News.
While things have largely returned to normal, with many people back in the office, experts say there is still a lot of work to be done when it comes to job satisfaction.
“Despite all the changes, despite more flexibility, more remote working, we’re not getting the right work-life balance,” Jill Cotton, career trends expert at Glassdoor, told Fortune. “When you look at what employees and workers really want right now, it’s autonomy.”
“A lot of great employees will be productive when their companies set them up for success,” Cotton continued. “I think it’s less about impacting productivity on bare minimum Mondays and more about employees and employers working together to create the most productive workplace possible.”
Mayes acknowledges that Bare Minimum Monday isn’t realistic for everyone — some jobs require near-constant high performance, have strict deadlines, or require people to interact with co-workers or the public — but argues finding even the smallest Ways to start the week off a little slowly has its benefits.
“I do more when I release the pressure,” she wrote. “It’s really a way to start the week by prioritizing you as a person rather than an employee. It changed my life dramatically, not because of productivity, but because of that self-compassion.
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.