Experts agree that people are sleeping less and less, including on weekends. Between housework, shopping and socialising, it’s not always easy to get a good night’s rest on Saturdays and Sundays.
Yet, according to a German study published last year in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, getting a good night’s sleep on our days off is crucial to our effectiveness at work.
Researchers at the University of Mannheim have now investigated how sleep quality over the weekend influences employees’ ability to mentally reconnect with their work on Monday and to be productive throughout the week.
After all, many working people find it difficult to get back into work on Monday morning after being away from the office for 48 hours. Some even adopt an aggressive attitude on that day, which eases off as the week progresses, according to a paper published in 2021 in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
For some, this phenomenon is even pathological: researchers refer to it as “Monday morning syndrome”, a disorder characterised, among other things, by a lack of energy, irritability, and difficulty concentrating.
While the existence of this syndrome is disputed, there is no doubt that workers need to undergo a process of psychological reattachment – that is, to mentally reconnect with their professional goals after the weekend.
The authors of this latest research suggest that working people find it less difficult to reconnect with work on Monday when they’ve slept well over the weekend. To test this hypothesis, they monitored 310 German employees over a five-week period, who were asked to answer a questionnaire on their sleep quality and work reattachment on Monday, followed by another questionnaire on Friday about their level of fatigue and performance throughout the week.
It turns out that volunteers who had rested sufficiently over the weekend had less difficulty getting down to work on Monday morning. Conversely, those who had not slept enough on their days off found it harder to get back into the swing of things.
Surprisingly, workers who had not slept enough on Saturday and Sunday due to various social obligations seemed not to experience this effect: despite their sleep deficit, they were able to get back into their work on Monday morning.
The study co-authors noted that fatigue accumulated over the weekend did not directly affect employees’ performance. But, given that exhaustion is detrimental to long-term efficiency, it’s nevertheless important to make rest a priority.
Indeed, this is why it’s vital to get enough sleep on Saturdays and Sundays. It may seem trivial, but sleep is the key to making Monday a satisfying and productive day, rather than the worst day of the week.
To achieve this, try applying the principles of the “quiet weekend” to keep Fridays low-key, and stop feeling guilty about resting. Without sufficient energy, you won’t get very far.