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Post Info TOPIC: The Most Depressing Day of the Week
MzHartz


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The Most Depressing Day of the Week
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Is Wednesday!  Hm, makes sense to me, particularly today.

Mondays should be depressing. The memory of a fun weekend still fresh in the mind, returning to all the problems left behind on Friday and the endless expanse of time until next weekend. Surely Mondays are the most depressing day of the week?

New research, though, suggests Mondays aren't as bad as we think. Unfortunately it also finds that Fridays and Saturdays aren't as good as we imagine either.

Imagined moods


Charles S. Areni of the University of Sydney and Mitchell Burger of the NTF Group surveyed 202 participants about what they imagined was their typical mood on each day of the week. This revealed some predictable results:
  • People thought their worst moods were experienced on Monday mornings and evenings.
  • People thought their best moods were experienced on Friday and Saturday mornings and evenings.

Fortunately Areni and Burger didn't believe these reports were accurate so they decided to test a further 351 people's moods in the moment by asking them how they were feeling each day, on that day.

Actual moods


They found that, on average, people's mood remained about the same throughout the week. Mondays weren't as depressing as people thought and Fridays and Saturdays weren't as exciting as people predicted.


Mood Graph
On average, people were actually in the worst mood on Wednesday and the best mood on Sunday, but the differences were small.


The results demonstrate the memory bias: when thinking back we tend to recall the worst incidence of an event we've experienced before. Mondays are stereotypically depressing, so we tend to recall the worst Mondays. Fridays and Saturdays are stereotypically exciting so we tend to recall the best Fridays and Saturdays.

Consequently, in reality our mood fluctuation over the week might not follow the stereotypical pattern of a steady increase from a low on Monday through to a high on Saturday. Instead our weekly average mood profile could be much flatter than we imagine.

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Jeremy Riggs


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That does surprise me. I would have expected Monday to win most depressing in a landslide.

Last time I worked at a normal job was almost ten years ago now, and it was a job that was unbearable the first week of the month.

So my chart would look pretty goofy unless you made it a day of the month graph. By the 28'th or 29'th of a month I was getting sick to my stomach thinking about the next week or two.

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Mad Mema


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I'd have thought Thursday would be the bottom of the list. hmm.gif

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MzHartz


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I'm surprised Tuesday was so high.

Maybe we should try this experiment on our own?

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SuzieB


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Jeremy, I feel you on that...The first week and last few days of the month are my most stressed and thus, most hated days. Other than that, I actually don't hate mondays...they seem to go very, very fast for me, and I hate thursdays and fridays as they are the slowest day of the week for me.

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Mad Mema


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Thursday has traditionally been mine, with Monday a close second. I believe I have mostly resolved my Thursday dysfunction by working from home that day when possible.

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confuzzed


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I wouldn't have expected Wednesday. Maybe it is because two days are gone but there are still two left. Unless a lot of people have a Wednesday morning like I had this morning.

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Woo Hoo


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Poor Wednesdays. People are not properly getting their hump.gif on    




 wink

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Mad Mema


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giggle.gif That's probably why our crew at work instituted "The Wednesday Staff Beating at Conference Room J".

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Woo Hoo


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lol

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confuzzed


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Maybe that is also why many of them are working form home today.

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Mad Mema


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Probably so. Interestingly enough, the regular attendees of the staff beating are always in the office on Wednesday. Probably because we know it is going to be a short day at the office. Lots of work does actually get done at the staff beatings... invariably someone has a network problem that we wind up figuring out.

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CP


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all days seem the same to me.

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