"Bare minimum Mondays" is growing office trend
MIAMI - The latest office trend eases into the workweek by doing less.
It's called "bare minimum Mondays," and it's not about slacking, it's about self-care
Marisa Jo Mayes, a self-employed digital creator, came up with a solution to the dreaded start of the work week. She keeps the first two hours of Monday free and schedules only three tasks for the day.
"As soon as the pressure was gone I was more productive than I've been in a long time," she said.
Mayes promoted the concept with Tik Tok videos and they went viral.
"People relate to the stress that I'm describing and the overwhelm that I'm describing. When they hear about the changes that I feel now, they want in," she said.
"Bare minimum Mondays" is the latest strategy designed to combat ever-increasing work burnout.
According to the job search engine and review site "Glassdoor," the phrase "mental health" in company reviews jumped 91% from 2019 to 2022, and "burnout" mentions were up 42% in that same time.
"If employers are concerned about how this is playing out in the workplace, it's a great time to reopen the discussion about how burnout is affecting employees," said Bonnie Chiurazzi, Glassdoor's Director of Marketing.
While the bare minimum approach isn't possible for all workers, Mayes says there are ways everyone can improve their day:
"It's really asking these questions that can start to get people thinking about themselves as also a human in addition to an employee," she said.
And that doing less can be more.