Why Monday is the most misunderstood day
WHEN THE Boomtown Rats, an Irish band, released “I Don’t Like Mondays” in 1979, the song became an instant hit. The inspiration behind it was the Cleveland Elementary School shooting in San Diego that year. The 16-year-old perpetrator listed “not liking Mondays” as her main reason for firing 36 shots, killing two adults and injuring eight children and a police officer. This is not, though, why the song resonated with millions of people around the world; most of them are in all likelihood unaware of its tragic origins. What many do recognise all too well is the difficulty of summoning the energy to get out of bed on Monday mornings in order to face the week ahead.
Many bosses argue that starting off the week in person in the office creates good energy. Plenty of employees beg to differ. A paper published in 2021 by the Journal of Applied Psychology, found that people tend to be more ill-mannered on Mondays, and grow more courteous as the week unfolds.
A paper from 2015 by Yun Tae Hwang and Amy Kang published in the Medical Journal of Australia goes so far as to diagnose a new condition, Mondayitis. The authors define it as “a systemic illness with a non-specific constellation of symptoms including fatigue, lethargy or asthenia, dysthymia, irritability, light-headedness, photophobia, dry mouth, myalgia and headache in the absence of another focal or systemic illness”.
2023-12-07 09:46:10
Post from www.economist.com
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