Thoughts From a Tower: Monday Is the Best Day of the Week

Thoughts From a Tower

Welcome to the Thoughts From a Tower series. This series is essentially a combination of stories and ideas. I’ll show some photos and tell stories about the towers and places that I’ve seen. Next, I present interesting thoughts that wandered through my mind while I climbed these towers. Refer to Thoughts From a Tower: Adventurous Mind page for further details.

I love Mondays. In fact, it’s my favorite day of the week. I know. You probably have that weird look on your face right now. I receive weird looks 99% of the time whenever admit that Monday is my favorite day of the week.

But it wasn’t always that way.

This story began on a sunny Monday afternoon as I stood atop the rolling hills of northern California.

Staring uneasily at the tower in front of me, I knew I was in for a very shitty day. The tower was 300 feet (91 meters) tall and completely loaded with an assortment of antennas. Every single antenna, no matter how small, would need to be analyzed. Furthermore, they would be a pain to maneuver around—life-threatening even.

As I climbed the tower, I pondered the almost universal disdain of Mondays. Surprisingly, the more I thought about it, the more I started to appreciate the sorely misunderstood Mondays.

It’s All Relative

The way I see it—Monday isn’t objectively worse compared to any other day of the week. The issue is mostly relative. While Friday marks the beginning of the weekend, Monday is the furthest from the weekend and signifies the end. That’s why people think Monday sucks. Relative to the other days, it’s the one furthest from the weekend. But a day’s placement is not grounds for automatic shittiness.

I’ve only ever worked as a field engineer. As a result, I’ve never had a consistent work schedule (working 9-5 from Monday to Friday). My schedule is based on a 2:1 ratio. That could mean working 2 weeks straight (through the weekends) and taking 1 week off, or working for 1 month straight and taking 2 weeks off. Most of the time, I would have the entire week off—Monday through Sunday.

This has been the norm ever since I started working as a field engineer (pretty much right out of college). To me, none of the days of the week were relative to each other. I often worked 7 days a week, or I had the entire 7 days off. Days just blended together, so I was in a unique position to objectively analyze the days of the week.

Much to Love

Over time, I’ve come to the realization that Monday is objectively better than the other days of the week.

1) New Week’s Resolutions: Monday is the start of the week. It signifies the beginning. Whenever we feel that we are at the beginning, we understand that it’s a great chance to start anew with clear goals, plans, or objectives.

Think of it as a new week’s resolution. The importance of a new year’s resolution is easily understood, but new week resolutions are arguably more important. Unlike new year’s resolutions that are often grand in scale, unmanageable, unrealistic, and unspecific, new week resolutions are on a smaller scale—making them more manageable, realistic, and specific enough to be actionable.

If I mess up on one week, then it’s perfectly fine to start again the next week. I do not feel as if I failed simply because only one week’s goals, plans, or objectives were not met. Easy. Just start again next week and keep going.

Over time, I’ve found that new week resolutions have had a far more profound effect on my life than new year’s resolutions ever did. By breaking grand ambitions into small actional steps, I was essentially able to complete several New Year’s Resolutions within the same year.

Simply put, it’s significantly harder to feel like a failure when you have multiple tries to follow through with your goals.

2) Momentum: I often find that, when I start my Monday off strong, the momentum is carried throughout the entire week. It’s a nice feeling knowing that I already crushed the first day of the week.

Sometimes, I essentially ride that high throughout the entire week—one achievement after another. To compound this with the new week resolution, I sometimes end up weeks or months ahead of schedule.

When you’re ahead, you’re excited to get even further ahead. When you’re behind, you tend to lose motivation and fall further behind.

3) Fewer Obstructions: There are fewer obstructions in your way on Mondays. Statistically speaking, traffic on the weekend is worse than on Monday. Understandably, Monday is consistently ranked as the best day when it comes to traffic. Simply put—very people are out and about (i.e. they’re at home complaining about their Monday).

I’ve noticed that the lines are shorter, parking spots are more plentiful, and the crowds are smaller. The effects are significant. Less time spent waiting around means more time to work on the things that I care about.

Naturally, bars and clubs are less packed. But that should not count as a negative against Mondays. That’s simply a quality that it does not have. And that’s one very specific quality. In most instances, crowds suck.

4) Contrarian: One of the best ways to guarantee a mediocre life is to do what everyone else is doing. Only those who dare to be different will excel. If many people hate Mondays, then it will serve you well to find a way to love Mondays. Even if you don’t believe in the three reasons above, you’ll be that much further ahead if you simply choose to look at Mondays from a different and more positive perspective.

State of Mind

I find that it’s much better for your well-being if you just don’t hate 1/7^th of your life. There’s no point just dreading it or making jokes over how much it sucks. Complaining does not solve the problem.

Mondays are 1/7^th of everyone’s life. Simply seeing it from a different perspective puts you significantly ahead of the curve. While everyone is dreading their Mondays, you can simply power right on through, have a great time, and set up great momentum for the rest of the entire week. And this momentum can be carried from week to week.

Most of the time, it’s an attribution error. I love what I do, so I look forward to it every day. Most of the time, people don’t hate Mondays, they just hate their jobs. Learning to love Mondays will not only help you tolerate your job more but will also give you a clear perspective and encourage you to find something that actually makes you look forward to Mondays.

I’ve also noticed that, when driven by a burning ambition, people (myself included) tend to naturally love Mondays for the reasons mentioned above. Most importantly, when you’re ambitious, you work throughout the entire week anyway. This means that the days of the week just blend together. If anything, you might even dislike weekends more than weekdays because there are additional disruptions and distractions during the weekends.

Fucking Mondays

This thought process about Mondays turned my annoyance on the tower into enjoyment. I stopped at various points to simply enjoy the serene surrounding. When I looked down, I realized that most of the work was already done because I was close to the top.