Get rid of Monday blues. Don't find ways to beat them

This post was originally published on the amarvani blog.

Somewhere we went wrong as a society. There are countless articles on the internet about how to beat Monday blues. This is like creating a massive problem and then figuring out ways to deal with that problem, rather than figuring out ways to root out the problem.

Who created Monday blues?

How the fuck did we get here?

Those are the questions we should be asking.

Let us start by understanding the root of the problem. As per a story on the internet, which states, and I quote: A calque of German ‘blauer Montag’, ‘blue Monday’ originally denoted a Monday on which people chose not to work as a result of excessive indulgence over the course of the weekend. Under the influence of the adjective ‘blue’ in the sense ‘dismal’, it came to denote a Monday that is depressing or trying.

Thereby, blue Monday came to be denoted of a day where people suffered from the aftereffects of alcohol and could not focus on work. Do not hold me accountable for this interpretation. It is some variation of this.

However, this doesn’t satisfy me. I have nothing against people overindulging in alcohol and destroying their livers in the process. I have everything against a society where majority of the world’s population doesn’t enjoy their work and it is accepted as normal. I have everything against a society where people can’t find ways to monetize their passions because nobody supports them, thereby making mercenary existence the only way of existence possible.

Let us go back to some more research.

How did we reach a point where everyone or most people hate their work?

The industrial revolution created large corporations which needed a large number of people to succeed. These corporations created jobs where people were offered a salary which got supplemented with more benefits as the years moved on. Benefits like health insurance, medical services, pool tables recreations rooms lured people with salary to come and work at jobs they don’t even like, forget love.

Salary became the biggest drug and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem is somewhere, the desire to understand ourselves got superseded by the need for a monthly salary which made life predictable and comfortable.

If people didn’t have jobs, they would have to go out in the world, find problems to solve and make the world a little better in their own way. That’s how most people would make their living and put food on the table. That’s entrepreneurship. In order to do that, one has to understand what one is good at, so that he/she can choose the kinds of problems to work on. It is a detailed and uncomfortable process.

The ability to make people without loving or enjoying your work is one of the greatest failure of the human life. Since we spend so much time at our work, the time is not enjoyable if we don’t enjoy our work.

It is exactly because of this reason that work is seen as some sort of pain. People divide their lives between work life and pleasure/happiness life since their work doesn’t give them joy or happiness.

Hence, Monday blues and the constant desire for the workweek to end and wait for the weekend so that people can do what they want.

There is something absolutely perverse about this entire system. It is not designed around happiness or joy. It has been designed for misery, especially for the employee. The employer usually looks at the employee as a dispensable resource and once the employee chooses to leave because he/she cannot cope up, the employer replaces them.

We need to create a world where Monday blues doesn’t exist in popular culture and people are ashamed to have Monday blues. We need companies that pride on having happy employees who enjoy coming to work because they identify with the mission of the company and that should be the only reason someone should work with a company. We need employees who understand themselves and seek employment where their interests and aptitude would be best suited so that they develop a positive worldview of work.

We need a world which rejects Monday blues and doesn’t look for 725 ways of dealing with Monday blues. It will take concerted effort since it is a problem that has been created over decade and won’t be solved in one big swoosh.

We need to STOP dealing with Monday blues.

We need to find ways to eliminate Monday blues from our lives, even if it takes one generation to do it. We need to do it, whatever it takes.

What can we do to get rid of Monday blues?

1. Look at work as a blessing and not as a source of pain

Work is a blessing. Work is our way to make the world a better place. Professional work that pays does so because it solves real world problems. If you form a positive world view of what work means to you, you will not consider blues on Monday.

2. Self-assessment

Nah, we don’t mean the boring self-assessment forms that they give you during appraisals. What we mean by self-assessment is understanding the kind of real world problems we would like to work on.

The key to getting rid of Monday blues is to work on real world problems that you find interesting to solve.

3. Find or create interesting work

We must make an effort to do stuff that we find interesting and meaningful. It is a long road but we must walk this road if we are to become a happier and more fulfilling society. As long as we live in a society where most people hate their jobs, which is currently the case as per Gallup, we are headed towards imminent doom.

4. New economy, old challenges

Technology is changing work and redefining business roles. However, human motivations don’t change. Human beings want to be happy, and they won’t be happy as long as Mondays and the rest of the weekdays are looked down upon, rather than looked forward to.

Work is a blessing. However, we went wrong altogether as a society somewhere and started looking at work as a source of pain. We need to cancel Monday blues, reconnect with ourselves and make work joyful.

It is on all of us individually, and together.

Thank you for reading.

Amar