It starts around four on Sunday afternoon. Nothing has happened. The weekend still has six hours in it, and you have stopped being in them. You check your email once, to see. You make a list for Monday, and the list makes it worse. Most days I'm stressed from the start, just trying to keep everything balanced.
A bad job can produce this too, with no rule involved, and that possibility comes first.
01
What you do on Sunday
It may run to a schedule.
The afternoon stops being enjoyable. You get short with the people around you. You open the laptop just to get a head start, and an hour goes. You sleep badly and wake before the alarm.
By Monday at ten you are usually fine. The dread was worse than the day.
People call it the Sunday scaries and treat it as a joke. It can cost you part of every weekend, which is not much of a joke.
It may cost your household something as well. Sunday evening may be when you are least available to them.
02
What the dread may be about
"If I'm not producing, I don't know who I am."
It may be about what the week will ask you to produce. Under Output, a week is a measure, and Sunday is when you look at how much it will take. It may also be the weekend itself. A day with nothing due is one of the things that can set this rule off. I could stop for the day and nothing would fall apart. I already know I won't.
Read about Output →"Stillness is where it catches me."
It may be about what could go wrong. Under Ahead, Sunday is the last chance to get covered before things start moving again. My head goes right to tomorrow and whether everything is going to be the way I need it.
Read about Ahead →Other rules can be here, and it may be none. It may simply be the job.
03
What is under the rule
Under Output, the fear may be that without achievement you don't matter. What would answer it is worth that doesn't require performance.
Under Ahead, the fear may be that if you stop managing, something goes wrong again. What would answer it is safety that doesn't require vigilance.
Getting a head start on Sunday answers neither. It may only move the start of the week to Sunday.
04
One question that separates them
Is the problem that you're not producing, or that you're not covered?
Ask it at four o'clock, when it begins. Not producing is the Output answer. Not covered is the Ahead answer.
If neither is it, there is not enough to tell from this question, and that is a result.
Then the plain explanation. If the dread is about one person at work, or about tasks you find pointless, or about a place that treats you badly, it may be accurate. For Ahead, the check is whether it continues when things are stable. For Output, what tells you more is what happens when the producing stops.
Subtraction starts with the ordinary explanation for this reason. If the job explains all of it, nothing else needs to.
05
One thing to try this week
Next Sunday, when it starts, write down the first three things you are dreading. One line each.
Beside each, write whether it is about how much you have to get done, about something that might go wrong, or about the job itself.
Keep the page and do the same the Sunday after.
When the answer is the job, the page is When You Hate Your Job but Can't Leave.