When Your Brain Starts Monday on a Sunday Night
My investigation last week about waking at 11 pm, thinking it's morning, got me wondering about another frequent sleep anomaly.
It’s Sunday night. You’re freshly showered and pyjamaed. You’ve snuggled into bed. You've resisted checking emails. You’ve even done the thing the wellness blogs say and opened a book instead of Instagram. The cat is settled between your feet. And now, you’ve drifted off to sleep, but not for long.
And yet, it’s not long before you wake. It seems your brain has decided it’s already Monday.
The rehearsal begins.
That meeting you forgot about last week? Oh, it’s back.
That one line in an email you sent that might have been interpreted as rude? Time to relive it.
That project that’s not due for another month? Definitely urgent at 2:14 am.
Why Is This Happening?
It’s not because you’re bad at relaxing. It’s because your brain, in its misguided loyalty, is trying to help. Specifically, your default mode network - the part of your brain that turns on when you’re not focused on a task - kicks in and starts stitching together worries, to-dos, conversations, and existential dread into a patchwork quilt of insomnia.
Anticipatory anxiety, or worrying about future events, is common on Sundays and tends to spike in the hours leading up to a new work week. It’s called “The Sunday Scaries,” but honestly, it feels as if your thoughts are warming up for a competitive overthinking tournament.
Your Brain Hates Ambiguity
Much of this is your prefrontal cortex trying to plan, predict, and preempt potential chaos. And in modern work life—where Mondays are often stacked with back-to-backs, performance pressure, and inboxes that have been quietly breeding over the weekend—your brain does what it thinks is best: starts problem-solving early. Horribly early.
Well… not really.
Productive planning happens when you're alert, caffeinated, and dressed. Sunday-night catastrophising is rumination in overly casual business attire. It taxes your sleep quality, elevates cortisol levels, and actually reduces your cognitive capacity for Monday.
In short: your brain is turning up for work early, and it’s burning through your Monday fuel supply while you’re still in your pyjamas.
What Can You Do?
Create a “brain offload” ritual - Write down your to-dos before dinner. Not at bedtime. The act of putting worries onto paper has been shown to reduce rumination and improve sleep.
Don’t reward the worry - If you wake up and start going through tomorrow’s to-dos, you’re reinforcing the pattern. Stay low-stim: no phone, no lights, and no rescheduling the staff meeting at 3 a.m.
Shift from “fixing” to “soothing” - Meditation apps, white noise, a boring podcast (you know the one)—your goal is not to solve, it’s to soothe. Remember, your brain isn’t broken; it’s just over-functioning with poor timing.
Design a gentler Monday - If possible, ease into it. Block time for focus, not just Zooms. Give yourself something small to look forward to (a croissant? a jazz playlist? a passive-aggressively labelled coffee mug?).
The Work Connection
If your team is constantly “starting Monday” on a Sunday night, it’s worth asking:
Are we over-reliant on Monday deadlines?
Do people feel pressure to prove their readiness immediately?
Is anyone accidentally modelling the belief that weekends are just...time-shifted prep sessions?
The best leaders don’t just protect their own boundaries. They normalise rest as productive, not as something to apologise for.
If your brain starts Monday before Monday starts, that’s not preparedness. That’s burnout with an Outlook calendar. Tell your nervous system it’s still the weekend and that Monday can wait its damn turn.