By | PRARTHANA PRAKASH | fortune.com
There’s a reason songs about Mondays tend to be downers.
Monday blues—that inertia people feel about starting the work week after a weekend—are one of the more common problems among working people. In a 2021 poll by YouGov, 58% of the 4,000 people surveyed responded that Monday was their least favorite day of the week. Now, a new way of dealing with that problem is one of the latest workplace trends—and one that’s not likely to make businesses happy.
“Bare Minimum Mondays” are a version of the Monday blues, with potential ramifications to employee productivity and the employer-employee equation. It’s a practice where employees show up to work to only do the bare minimum on a Monday, often starting the day late after a productive morning of self-care rituals.
This term has been popularized by Marisa Jo, a TikToker, who describes it as a way for her to quell the work pressure and hold herself accountable to “completing the least amount of work necessary to get by that day.”
Jo’s videos about the work trend have gone viral on TikTok, with her most recent video posted last week getting over 670,000 views. In that video, Jo walks through some of her habits to slow down Mondays and do things that make her feel good. She has a dedicated playlist to the so-called “bare minimum Mondays,” and the hashtag #bareminimummondays has about 1.8 million views.
In a video she described the trend as “rejection of all the pressure I felt on Sunday and Monday” and prioritizing well-being over productivity instead of giving in to the hustle culture.
