Sorry Gen Z, CEO's Started "Bare Minimum Mondays"

TL;DR: You are both doing the most important things you need and want to do with self-compassion and kindness. Stop being lazy with your language. "Be curious, not judgmental."

An article on Business Insider resurfaced for me last week on "Bare Minimum Mondays". (Non-paywall reference article on BuiltIn.) When I first heard this term in January or February 2023, I became extremely frustrated. I wasn't frustrated by the intended practice, I was frustrated by the market positioning of the term. The term might be new but the intent and practices have been well documented and recommended for decades. (I also thought about starting a TikTok channel for better distribution...)

Let's break this down.

To understand Bare Minimum Mondays, let's skip the various definitions and look at what the practice advocates:

• No Meetings.
• Time Limits on Email / Social Media / Digital Devices (and avoiding these to start your day).
• Physical Movement Outside.
• Focused Dedicated Time on the Most Important (not urgent!) Projects / Priority.
• Creative Thinking.

What the practice explicitly does not support:

• Abdicating or Ignoring Responsibility.

Bare Minimum Mondays invite you to:

• Create an atmosphere of success & kindness for yourself,
• Get clarity on the environment & mindset that support your most confident & compassionate self,
• Identify the most important project(s) to work on and when you are best suited to work on them, work without interruption or distraction,
• Take breaks to fuel and move,
• Remove tasks / meetings from your schedule that do not meet the above criteria,
• Do more work if you want.

It even includes a disclaimer that moms, in particular, could have a massive challenge with this because the demands placed on them.

To find evidence on my hypothesis that CEO's have very similar operating procedures for Mondays, I googled "How do CEOs start Mondays". In 0.39 seconds I got 206,000,000 results.

Common themes of those results:

• Two-thirds of CEO's experience anxiety, overwhelm, irritation, disappointment. (Center for Economic Policy Research)
• Watch Brene Brown's TedTalk on vulnerability (Forbes)
• PUT THE PHONE DOWN. (Tim Ferriss doesn't have social media on his phone. Justin Welsh keeps his phone on Do Not Disturb 24/7.)
• Focus on 3 - 5 things you want to get done that week. Not on Monday - the entire week!!! (Eisenhower, Covey, and thousands of pages of research.)
• Start the day slowly and quietly. (Wall Street Journal, Sundar Pichai, Jocko Willink)
• Move your body outside. (Winston Churchill, Robin Sharma, Shinrin-yoku + thousands of years of Japanese philosophy.)
• Give yourself free time. (K. Anders Ericcson, Pang)

It's almost the exact same. The language is just different. Both groups might even find themselves reaching for the same Nespresso pod.

Grace Blacksea, CEO of Quench Collective, describes her company as: a community + education for modern leaders. Helping you design your business around your life...not the other way around.

In February 2021, she posted right here on LinkedIn about giving yourself a CEO day. That is more than one year before Marisa Jo Mayes posted on TikTok about doing the bare minimum.

I can't help but wonder how we might be approaching this differently if Blacksea posted on TikTok instead of or as well as LinkedIn. What would management theory professionals, Gallup, Wiley and other research firms be studying differently if Business Insider, CNBC, Axios, Vice, etc caught and promoted Blacksea's original post instead of Mayes'.

The reality is, whether you want to practice bare minimum Mondays or having a CEO day, you're right. Your desired outcome is remarkably similar. The motivations behind your intent, nearly identical.

If you have angst towards a CEO, your job, your manager... if you're feeling anxious about things on your plate... if you're a night owl not a lark... if you think a younger generation of team members is putting in less effort...

If you are making broad sweeping generalizations based on a perishable slang term you heard once... if you think an entire generation of people is underperforming... if you don't understand how TikTok could benefit your business...

Watch Brene's TedTalk, take off the armour, get curious, and have a conversation. You'll find more in common than you realize. You might even start going for a walk together on Mondays.