Taking the Edge Off Sunday Night
For the Sunday-evening slump, when the week ahead starts pressing in before it has even begun. It gives the dread something concrete to do with itself, so the evening belongs to you rather than to Monday.
Work · Work · Worry · 8 items · once a week
The checklist
- Call it dread, not a warning — Sunday nerves are a mood, not a forecast of how the week will go.
- Ask what you are actually dreading — It is usually one meeting or one person, not the whole week.
- Look at the real calendar — Ten seconds of facts beats an hour of imagining what is on it.
- Write Monday’s first task on paper — One known starting point takes the vagueness out of the morning.
- Sort one small thing out tonight — Lay out clothes, pack the bag, find the train fare; that is one less thing to carry.
- Close the work apps on your phone — A notification on Sunday evening is Monday arriving early.
- Put something you like in the evening — A show, a bath, a phone call; the hours left are still yours.
- Set a bedtime and keep it — A late Sunday is what makes Monday as rough as you feared it would be.
Use this checklist Free account: tick items off and keep each day's record.
How to use it
Run through it once a week, honestly and without scoring yourself. A checklist is a way of noticing, not a test: an item you cannot tick is information about the day, not a verdict on you. Over a few weeks the pattern of what gets ticked and what does not says more than any single pass.
With a free Theraglee account the checklist remembers each pass, so you can look back. Without one, you can still read it here and keep your own copy.