How Do I Get Rid of Sunday Evening Anxiety?

A reader asks:

My anxiety seems to spike every Sunday evening as I think about the work week ahead. In addition to the stress and anxiety, I usually end up awake in bed worrying about stuff I have to get done this week, don’t sleep well, then have a hard time being productive on Monday. Any advice?

Here are three of the most common causes of Sunday evening anxiety and some suggestions for dealing with them effectively:

1. Weekday Procrastination

It sounds obvious, but if you procrastinate a lot during the week, you will have a lot of excess stuff to-do the next week. And while you can often shove it out of your mind long enough to enjoy Friday evening, Saturday, and maybe even Sunday brunch, it will eventually break through by Sunday evening and lead to a lot of stress, worry, and anxiety (not to mention sleep issues).

But here’s why most don’t realize procrastination is a core cause of their Sunday evening anxiety…

It’s minor, not major, procrastination that leads to chronic anxiety.

See, most people who struggle with Sunday evening anxiety aren’t terrible procrastinators in the sense of falling into big time, flagrant episodes of procrastination:

They don’t leave the entire 50-slide presentation to the board up to the last minute.
They don’t spend an entire week binge watching all nine seasons of The Office and doing zero work on writing their novel.

No, their procrastination patterns are more subtle and easier to rationalize away…

Not responding to an email right now because it would mean spending 10 minutes digging up some old information
Putting off the outlining stage of the report you need to write because “I’ve got time…”
Not texting your old friend from college back because it feels awkward that you haven’t been in touch for so long
Delaying scheduling that meeting because you’re hoping someone else will, and as a result, inherit responsibility for it
Or scheduling a meeting for next week to “collaboratively brainstorm” ideas for the new proposal because you’d rather not risk looking stupid by drafting a proposal yourself and sending it around to everyone.

In other words…

Procrastination is a death by a thousand cuts problem.

And while no one instance of minor procrastination is a problem, the habit of procrastinating in small ways throughout the week is an enormous problem.

So, where does this leave us?

You’re chronically anxious on Sunday evenings because you’re overwhelmed.
You’re overwhelmed because you have a habit of procrastinating during the week, and consequently, accumulating to-do list debt each week.
And you’re in the habit of procrastinating, in part, because each bit of procrastination is so small that it’s easy to ignore or rationalize away.

Now, while there are literally hundred of approaches, frameworks, and hacks for dealing with procrastination, one that I’ve found to be highly effective yet underrated is this:

When you feel the urge to procrastinate, remind yourself of your values.

Personal values are principles or ideals that guide and motivate our behavior. And while we’ve all got values, the problem is we rarely remember to use them. This is frequently as simple as reminding yourself of why a particular task or project is important to you long-term despite feeling unpleasant in the moment.

So start with this:

When you feel the urge to procrastinate, hit the Pause Button.
Briefly acknowledge and validate any emotions you’re experiencing (anxiety, frustration, guilt, etc.)
Then, ask yourself: Why is following through on this task important to me?

This won’t immediately solve every instance of procrastination in your life, but it will be surprisingly effective much of the time. And even more importantly, the more you get into the habit of reminding yourself of your values in the face of procrastination, the easier it will get and the more often it will help.

In other word, just like procrastination compounds into to-do list debt and Sunday evening anxiety, reminding yourself of your values in moments of procrastination will compound into more emotional tolerance and stronger motivation to get things done, which will result in less to-do list debt and lower anxiety on the weekends.

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2. Abusing Your Body on the Weekend

A very common pattern I see working with clients who struggle with Sunday evening anxiety and sleep issues is that they don’t take care of their bodies. Specifically, they tend to fall into unhealthy habits on Friday and Saturday, which make them far more vulnerable to stress and anxiety on Sunday.

For example:

A normally healthy and active woman who works out “religiously” and eats “clean” on the weekdays, drinks 3-5 glasses of wine on Friday and Saturday nights, which results in poor sleep quality, and as a result, a much harder time managing difficult emotions like anxiety and guilt on Sunday evening.
The typically disciplined guy who goes to bed at 9:30 each weeknight and wakes up at 6:00 each morning, ends up staying up ‘till midnight or beyond Friday and Saturday nights, sleeps in until 8 or 9 on Saturday and Sunday mornings, then wonders why he has trouble falling asleep at 9:30 on Sunday night.

You can’t expect your body to take care of you if you don’t take care of your body.

And a very common problem is the tendency to “let loose” on Friday and Saturday (which is really just code for do a bunch of things that I know are bad for my body) and then suffer the understandable consequences on Sunday evening which frequently take the form of increased anxiety and difficulty sleeping.

So, to make all this a little more concrete, I would think about how you treat your body on the weekends in terms of three big categories or buckets:

Diet. What types of food, drink, or other substances am I putting in my body that I normally wouldn’t?
Activity. Do I continue to exercise and move my body on the weekends or do I spend a lot of time “laying around”?
Sleep. Do I maintain the same good sleep habits and routines on the weekends that I do on the weeknights?

To be clear, I’m not saying this is the only cause or contributor to Sunday evening anxiety. And I’m not saying this is the cause of Sunday evening anxiety for everyone.

But many, many people do fall into this pattern (often without really realizing it) of abusing their bodies on Fridays and Saturdays then paying the price on Sunday evening in the form of increased stress, anxiety, and difficulty sleeping.

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3. It’s Time for a New Job

I’ve saved the most uncomfortable for last…

Sometimes Sunday evening anxiety is just your brain’s way of telling you that you need a new job.

Especially if you’ve taken a good hard look at other potential causes for Sunday evening anxiety and nothing else seems to make sense, there’s a good chance this Sunday evening anxiety is a form of work dread which is your mind trying to tell you to consider a new job or even field.

Of course, a lot of people are not emotionally prepared to even seriously reflect on the idea that they can or should switch jobs or professions, much less start to take action on that possibility. And for good reason: Most people have invested huge amounts of time, money, and identity into a particular job or profession, so the resistance to even considering the possibility of leaving it is understandably intense.

But that doesn’t make it untrue.

If you’ve “tried everything” and still can’t find a reasonable explanation for your Sunday evening anxiety, I think you owe it to yourself to seriously reflect on the possibility that it is in fact a kind of message from yourself asking you to consider a new form of work or even new field or profession entirely.

Here are a few reflection questions that I’d recommend you spend some time journaling about:

What percentage of my working hours do I truly enjoy?
If I could take a magic pill and get a re-do for my professional life, would I take it? If so, what other jobs/careers would I consider more strongly knowing what I know now?
What do I dislike most about my work? And are those things primarily centered around the work itself (doing surgery, analyzing P&L sheets) or the way I work or context in which I work (being a surgeon in a giant hospital, analyzing P&L sheets on my own with no collaboration or teamwork)?
Who are 2-3 people I know who seem to genuinely enjoy their work? If I could interview them, what are 3 questions I would ask them to understand why they loved their work so much?
If I drew a Venn diagram of Things I Have a Natural Talent For + Things I Genuinely Enjoy and Get Excited About, what would be in the center?

A final thought I’ll leave you with on this topic:

You’re allowed to deeply consider a job or a career change without making one.

That sounds obvious, but you would be shocked by how many people I talk to who literally won’t allow themselves to even consider a job or career change because it’s either A) scary, or B) they’ve preemptively convinced themselves that it wouldn’t be feasible for them.

p.s. Truly one of the most tragic things I encounter on a regular basis is people who write off a dramatically better life for themselves because of the sunk cost fallacy. Avoid it with every fiber of your being.

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Next Steps

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