Sunday Dread Is a Leadership Signal, Not a Calendar Problem

In The Wall Street Journal, Ray A. Smith reports in The Sunday Scaries Are Real, and They're Getting Worse that pre-Monday dread has become common enough for Merriam-Webster to add the term to its online dictionary. The people he interviewed draft emails on Sunday afternoons, ration weekend work with an hourglass and lean on coaches to set boundaries. Data compiled for the Journal by workforce analytics firm ActivTrak found employees spent about 12% of Sundays on work messaging and chats last year, up from 6.6% in 2023.

The survey behind the trend is worth a closer look. In the FlexJobs Workplace Frustrations Report, 57% of more than 2,100 U.S. workers said they experience the Sunday scaries, and 24% said it happens every week. Workload and unfinished tasks were the most cited cause. Working with their manager came next.

Coping Tips Treat the Symptom

The article's advice is sensible. Set guardrails, finish a little more on Friday, approach Monday with curiosity. Individuals should do those things. But nearly every fix in the piece asks the employee to manage a feeling the workplace keeps producing. When more than half of workers dread the same day, the dread is telling us something about how work is designed and led.

Look at what people are doing on Sunday. They are preparing to prove they are ready. Am I organized enough? Am I prepared for this meeting? Those are the questions of people who expect to be judged on Monday morning rather than supported. One executive in the story admits she used to message her direct reports on weekends before she understood the intrusion. That is how a culture gets set without anyone deciding it. A leader's Sunday email tells the team what devotion looks like, whether or not that was the intent. Most leaders never mean to send that message, which is exactly why it spreads so easily.

What the Dread Is Really About

Another finding in the FlexJobs report caught my attention: 18% of workers said they had stayed quiet in a meeting despite having something to contribute. Put that beside the dread and a pattern appears. Many people aren't afraid of the work itself. They are anxious about the version of themselves they have to perform once they walk in. The week asks them to edit who they are, keep their real concerns to themselves and look busier than they feel. Sunday is when they start getting into character.

I described a similar dynamic in A Wait-and-See Economy Creates Wait-and-See Cultures. When job security feels thin, people protect themselves by staying visible and staying quiet at the same time. Weekend messages go up. Honest conversations go down. Everyone looks committed, and almost no one says what is actually overloading them.

That makes this a conviction problem as much as a workload problem. Conviction shows up in small, unglamorous moments, and Monday morning is full of them. A person with conviction can walk into Monday and say this priority list doesn't add up, and here is what I would cut. A culture that rewards that kind of honesty produces fewer anxious Sundays, because people stop spending the weekend rehearsing a performance.

What Leaders Can Change by Next Sunday

Start with your own sending habits. If you write on the weekend, schedule the messages for Monday morning. Then tell your team plainly that weekend replies are not expected, and back it up by never rewarding them.

Use the first meeting of the week to subtract, not just assign. Ask each person what they would drop if they could, and drop at least one thing together. Unfinished work is the top source of the dread, and leaders are the ones with the authority to take work off the list.

This week, ask each person on your team a direct question: what part of the week do you dread, and why? You will learn more from that answer than from most engagement surveys. If the answer is a meeting you run, or the way you assign work, you have found something only you can fix.

For individuals, the coping tips help, and one more step helps too. Name what you are actually anxious about on Sunday, then decide whether it is something to prepare for or something to say. Often the healthiest Monday move is a candid conversation rather than another hour of preparation. That conversation is one of the reps where conviction gets built, and it gets easier each time you have it.

Smith closes with a worker learning to approach Monday with curiosity instead of pressure. Leaders can make that shift far easier by building a week people don't need to brace for. You will notice the difference in your Monday meetings, when the people who used to stay quiet start speaking up.

When people can bring their real selves to Monday, they stop spending Sunday rehearsing someone else.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.