How to Not Hate Mondays
by Vin Miller
Like most people, you’re probably stuck in the endless cycle of eagerly anticipating Friday, and just a few days after it passes, dreading Monday and the rest of the workweek that follows. It doesn’t have to be this way.
A full time employee dedicates nearly half of their wakeful hours to their job each week, and in many cases, it’s even more than that. With the typical retirement age being 65, most people spend more than 40 years of their lives doing this! When you spend this much time doing something, it will undoubtedly have a significant impact on your mood, energy level, quality of life, and overall sense of wellbeing. It can even influence your health, especially if there’s a lot of stress involved.
Although it’s unfortunately rare, some people do genuinely love their jobs. For these people, the workweek is just as enjoyable and rewarding, if not more so, than the weekend. Imagine how much different your life could be if this were the case for you.
What’s Your Ideal Job?
If you don’t thoroughly enjoy your job, you’re merely trading your precious time for money. Although this is sometimes a necessity, it’s clearly not the most rewarding way to live your life. The following are some tips that should help you identify the type of job that will bring you more fulfillment and perhaps even cause you to anticipate Mondays with eagerness.
Focus on Your Passions
Your passions are the activities that you anticipate with excitement. They help you to wake up each morning full of happiness and ambition, they bring enjoyment to your life, and if applied correctly, they’re a valuable source of fulfillment. As such, having a job that relates to one or more of your passions can make all the difference between enjoying your job or dreading it.
We all have different passions and it doesn’t matter how impressive or noble they are, but rather that you’re aware of them and are able to pursue them. An easy way to be sure that you know what you’re passions are is to consider what your ideal day would be like. If you had no obligations whatsoever and money were not a concern, how would you want to spend your typical day?
Once you have a clear understanding of what your passions are, the next step is to make them purposeful and identify how you can achieve fulfillment from them. In other words, you need to determine how to apply your passions in a way that makes your time seem worth while and rewarding. Most people accomplish this by using their passion as a way to help others, but this certainly isn’t the only way.
Identify Your Values
Although many of us don’t realize it, we all have a set of values that we live by on a daily basis. They directly influence our decisions, our interactions with others, and in turn, our lives. Your values help to define you as a person and represent what you stand for and what you believe in. As with passions, it doesn’t matter how impressive they are to others, but rather that you’re aware of them and are living by them.
If your job challenges your ability to live by your values, it will likely create a lot of internal conflict and make it difficult to truly dedicate yourself. For example, if you value honesty, you’ll find it difficult to work for a company that uses deceptive advertising. Likewise, if you value nature, you’ll have a hard time dedicating yourself to work that pollutes the environment.
Know Your Personality
The more aware you are of your personality and it’s finer qualities, the more able you’ll be to put yourself in favorable situations that are rewarding, enjoyable, and fulfilling. Some people are energized by being around others and thrive in situations requiring a lot of personal interaction while others would much rather work by themselves, perhaps at home, and be free to focus deeply without interruption. If you work in an environment that’s not well suited to your personality, it will likely become a persistent source of stress and frustration.
If you’d like to look deeper into your personality and gain a better understanding of it, I highly recommend reading Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence by David Keirsey to help you get started.
Earning a Living through Passion
It can take a lot of determination to accurately identify your passions and values, gain a deeper understanding of your personality, and find a fulfilling way to apply all of it. Unfortunately, it can be even more difficult to apply this knowledge in a way that will support you financially, especially if your ambitions require that you run your own business. It requires that you be creative in identifying a market for what you have to offer.
Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love by Jonathan Fields is an excellent book about this exact topic. With a little creativity, just about any passion can be turned into a career, and the book provides a number of inspiring examples to prove it.
Be Happy with What You Have
Unfortunately, the profound and exciting moment of finally realizing what you really want to do with your career is often followed by the disappointment of it seeming unrealistic or too difficult to achieve. While it’s certainly in your best interest to aggressively pursue a more rewarding and enjoyable career, it’s also important to avoid unnecessary disappointment by making the best of your current job and focusing on the value it adds to your life.
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Perhaps you should write a student version of this article. Today I enjoy every schoolday because I am passionate with my pre-university subjects and I appreciate learning new things every single day.
Last year I may like my subjects but was dreading every school day as a person lazy to study. My ego was overblown too, as a result, I failed 2 exams, but the exams after that I 2x better results. I spent most of my time websurfing uselessly also that time.
Today I feel I am somewhere in between lazy and interested in studying. Studying is another thing I am obviously calmly approaching. Everything has a transition period.
Today I am on websites that, I feel benefit me. Like re-learning the English language so that I can learn other languages (now trying to decode Swedish for fun) and write better, also self help and health sites like this. Instead of only Apple Inc. -centered sites last year.
Jag vill vara god hälsa. (I want to be in good health – in Swedish – i do not know if correct)
Gusto ko malusog ako. (I want to be healthy in Tagalog, my mother tongue)
Mabuhay, Vin (I think it means have a good life in Tagalog)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, ægil!
That’s an excellent suggestion! Most people enter college not having any clue what they want from life and typically rely on the job market to guide their decisions. This is a direct path to many years of hating Mondays.
I think it’s important for high school students to spend more time reflecting on their lives and considering what they’re deeply passionate about. If had a better idea of my own passions as a high school student, I would’ve chosen a much different path and would have undoubtedly gained more value from it. Instead, I pursued a direction that matched my talents and it never really inspired any passion.
Yes, in my whole high school years I was clueless too! I spent most of my time during high school being a rabid Apple, Inc. fan and in early years playing RPGs, which would be better spent in reflecting my life. Thanks for sharing your story!, and here you are, doing I believe is your passion.
Confessions of an Apple fan (optional read)
Now I realized I do not need to be an Apple fan to enjoy its beautiful stuff, I better be happy about the good quality they produce and how it helps as a utility to my needs. Instead of expecting the next Apple product, I better enjoy every moment of it till it breaks or becomes too slow to be used. I better enjoy what I have at the moment.
I’m still working to rationalize my Apple cravings, because I value not being materialistic.
I abused my 2008 iPod touch simply because the form was not perfect, so it became unusable. Today I’m fine without one! I’m really sorry, dad (oh I did not tell him yet)! but my late 2006 iMac is going strong and I am using it to write my comments.
I realized I do not need iPods, because they distract me from the present moment. When I need to listen to music, I use my iMac instead.
hey Vin!!
awwwwsome post.
really cool idea for topic too.
like the way you put “trading your time for money”.
…and def agree about changing the situation and doing things that you love and connecting to your core and what you really want.
…but at the same time, you can do anything and be happy. it’s not that a certain job MAKES you happy and another doesn’t, it’s that you allow yourself to be happy in one job and not in another. no matter what you do, you always do it right now. that’s always perfect…now is always perfect; the only difference is that you’re layering all sorts of judgements over a bad job that you then buy into and say, ‘oh, wow, this job sucks because it makes me feel bad’ – but it doesn’t… you make you feel bad.
right now = it’s all good… no matter what you’re doing.
this is it,
this…is…it… whether you’re taking out trash or doing your dream job, this is the only time you can be happy. and sure, it might not be an ideal job, but you can still choose to not make it hell, you can choose to let yourself be happy.
Well said, Alex! Thanks for your comment!
If people like Nick Vujicic can be happy living without limbs, we can certainly be happy with a less than ideal job while still trying to better the situation.