It's Blue Monday! Or is it?

If you’ve opened up Twitter, or browsed through your emails to see the usual barrage of emails containing ***GREAT OFFERS*** then by now you’ll probably be aware of the fact that today, Monday the 15th of January, is Blue Monday.

We’re not talking about the song Rolling Stone Magazine voted the second best dance song of all time, due to its ‘funk, angst and aloof sexiness’. There’s no funk and certainly no sexiness to be had on this Blue Monday.

That's because it's (apparently) the saddest day of the year.

So how is this worked out? Well, to dispel any doubts you might have had, there’s a complicated looking equation to prove it – something containing so many brackets, slashes and italics that it must have been cooked up by geniuses who know more about this sort of thing than you or I.

Here it is:

The Equation

 [W+(D-d)]xTQ/MxNA

Where W is weather, D is debt, d monthly salary T time since Christmas, Q time since failure of attempt to give something up, M low motivational level and NA the need to take action.

So it’s quite straightforward. The facts that it’s January, a bit grey, you’ve not got much money, Christmas is a long way away and you’ve probably failed at something all combine to make it a really bad day.

Or does it?

The only real problem with Blue Monday is that the science behind it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny very well.

It just so happened that the above equation wasn’t discovered by leading maths & psychology boffins, instead it was created in 2005 by PR firm Porter Novelli.

They cooked up Blue Monday in collaboration with a travel company to help them sell more holidays, which is slightly counter-intuitive as one of the main reasons they’re telling you you should be sad is your lack of money.

You can watch a great video from Inc here which explains the roots of Blue Monday, and paints a much clearer picture of what to expect.

But why is this important? Well, mental health campaigners believe that Blue Monday can be damaging to those with mental health issues, and some are looking to reinvent the day with a positive slant, as Bright Blue Monday.

So, don’t be dragged down by Blue Monday, and don’t believe everything you read on the internet (apart from this LinkedIn article). Turns out that Blue Monday is just a song Rolling Stone didn’t like as much as One More Time by Daft Punk and today is just Monday.

It’s still early January though, which means that we’re really busy at Charlton Morris. Equations aside, if you work in the Medical, Life Sciences or Industrial markets and your role is making you feel blue then get in touch with one of our team to help find something new.

Have you been coerced into buying anything new because of Blue Monday? Is it really damaging to promote a day that you’re allowed to be sad on? Let me know what you think in the comments!