New research proves that Mondays aren’t actually the worst day of the week. It turns out most people dislike the first four days of the week about equally.
That’s the result of a new study reported by the BBC:
The report authors told the Journal of Positive Psychology that the concept of miserable Mondays should be ditched.
Prof Arthur Stone of Stony Brook University said: “Despite our global beliefs about lousy Mondays, we conclude that this belief should be abandoned.
“Cultural myths may vastly over-emphasise actual day of the week mood patterns.”
© Flickr user B Rosen
This report is really about the difference between perception and reality. There’s a widespread belief that people get a “case of the Mondays”, but actual surveys of 340,000+ American business people don’t show this disparity.
A better question might be about actual workplace productivity. Does this go up or down on Mondays? Or is there really no impact on productivity at all?
A recent paper sponsored by the global staffing firm Manpower offers some carefully-worded findings (PDF):
…labour productivity may vary over days of the week for a variety of physical, physiological and compositional reasons relating to lapsed time since the start of a working period, the timing and duration of rest periods, and worker preferences. However, our review of the empirical literature uncovers scant direct evidence on day-of-week productivity effects.
In other words: it’s not so much that people are more or less productive on a particular day, but that the most significant effect may be the “timing and duration” of rest periods and in particular “worker preferences.”
If there’s a problem with Mondays is that we didn’t get enough of a break. Or, that we’d rather work a different schedule but simply have no choice.
How are your Mondays?
@robbyslaughter
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