How to Use the Weekly Mood Cycle to Boost Your Productivity and Happiness

Every week, the mood is like a roller coaster cycle – Monday is often dull, and Friday is full of joy. Studies have also proved this. People’s emotions fluctuate in a seven-day cycle, with Mondays being the most negative and Saturdays the most positive.
Here comes the question, if you have to arrange an important and difficult job next week, and you need to arrange your own time to complete it, would you choose to arrange it on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday?
Saturday is the best mood, of course you can’t arrange work, so is it Friday? In addition to the emotional roller coaster, there are some other little mysteries in the week, understand these mysteries, maybe you can get twice the result with half the effort!
Mondays Are Painful, But They Can Be Prime Day

Whether it’s a student returning to school or an office worker returning to work, it’s always unpleasant to leave the leisure time on the weekend. After all, people instinctively avoid stress and pursue happiness. In fact, a painful Monday can also make people very motivated.
A survey by Robert Half, an international human resources company, found that 56% of people believe that work is more productive at the beginning of the week (such as Mondays and Tuesdays), and 29% of respondents believe that Mondays are more productive at work. The most productive day, so Mondays tend to be more work-focused, albeit in a bad mood. On a daily basis, nearly three-quarters of respondents believe that they get the most work done before lunch.
Why does the beginning of the week or day lead to better work performance? Probably because of the “Fresh Start Effect”.
People always pin their hopes on new beginnings, such as setting goals for the coming year at New Year’s Eve, and writing eloquent work plans at the beginning of the quarter. Every start is like saying goodbye to the past self, regrouping, and making positive progress. Start a new struggle with this attitude.
A good start is half the battle. If you like the feeling of “being a new person”, you might as well make good use of the new start effect. With this fresh energy at the beginning, set aside a time every Monday to plan and plan. Go to work with new expectations.
Compared with other days, emotions on Monday are more likely to affect the motivation of work and study.
A study that looked at weekly mood and academic motivation among college students found that a good Monday mood led to stronger academic motivation, and a bad Monday mood also made it easier to be self-critical.
Especially for perfectionists with high self-demand, if they think that the learning tasks are heavy and stressful, and they lack self-motivation, they will feel more negative when returning to school on Monday. In contrast, Mondays are more positive and pleasant when you think your learning goals are interesting and meaningful.

Going back to school or going to work sometimes makes people feel “sorrowful”, but if you can deliberately arrange some small things that make you happy, tell yourself “it’s okay, it’s good to start”, reduce perfectionism, and look for learning and work. Meaning can help you pass Monday more smoothly, mobilize positive emotions, and start a good start to the week.
In addition to Monday, Tuesday is also the first half of the week, and it is also a productive day. Some surveys even found that Tuesday is more productive than Monday. This may be due to the fact that Monday takes more time to plan and allow the body and mind to get used to the work week, while Tuesday allows for maintaining or even increasing productivity.
So, if you want to schedule some important or difficult tasks, try putting them on Monday or Tuesday.
For managers, it is best not to bring all employees to a meeting on Monday morning-this is a precious productive time for employees, and it is really a pity to use it for meetings.
Indistinguishable Wednesdays, Thursdays, and “bad” Fridays

Painful Mondays and happy Fridays are always impressive, and the rest of the day tends to be a mess. If you are asked “what day is it today” on Wednesday, you will probably have to think more about it, and even accidentally say Tuesday or Thursday.
A British study found that people are more likely to misremember workdays that fall in the middle of the week. In the experiment, the subjects’ judgments on the middle of the week (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) were more likely to be wrong than on other days. Even if the judgment was correct, it took more time to think. Among them, the judgment on Wednesday required the most reaction time, and it was Monday and Weekly. More than double five.
The study also found that “Tuesday”, “Wednesday” and “Thursday” had fewer semantic associations than other weekdays, similar levels of emotional arousal, and even fewer search engine appearances.
The reason why the days of the week are easy to confuse is that people have more flat and similar inner impressions of them; the reason why Monday and Friday are remembered more clearly is that they have richer and unique meanings, giving people a more extreme feeling. feel.
In English, Wednesday is called “Hump Day” (Hump Day), because Wednesday is like a hump, which is the middle stage of the working day. After the hump day, everyone begins to gradually “put bad”.
When the work management app “Redbooth” made statistics on the application data in 2017, it was found that since Wednesday, the amount of work completed has gradually declined. Among the working days, the tasks completed on Friday are the least, accounting for only 16.7% of the weekly work. Probably everyone It’s Friday and I’m thinking about what to do for the weekend.
Therefore, the important things can be put in the front row as much as possible. After all, we can’t even tell the day on Wednesday, and people’s thoughts on Friday have already flown to the weekend.
Is Monday really that painful? try mood tracking

Is Monday really that painful, and Friday really that happy? Perhaps there is an element of subjective exaggeration.
A study by the University of Sydney found that when people predict their daily emotions for the next week, they tend to underestimate their emotional levels on Monday and Tuesday, and in fact, in the following week, Monday and Tuesday are not as low as they imagined. Other days are not as happy as they expected. Not only were they biased in their predictions, they were also more likely to rate Monday and Tuesday lower in mood when they recalled the past week.
Monday mornings are not necessarily worse than any other morning. In the interviews, many subjects were surprised by the pessimistic impression of Monday in their hearts. In fact, there are many happy things on Monday, such as sharing their weekends with colleagues, and their actual feelings on Monday are more related to what happened that day. things related.
Therefore, although the seven-day emotional cycle is common in the crowd, it is actually different every week, and emotions do not fluctuate completely according to subjective predictions. People’s similar feelings about a particular day are also likely the result of long-held stereotypes. Instead of being affected by biased emotional expectations, it is better to explore your own emotional cycle.
Mood Tracking is an effective way to create a space for yourself to reflect on the progress and feelings of the day by using a mood recording app or a mood diary, and have a clearer awareness of your mood swings.
Long-term journaling can reveal patterns in how your mood changes—for example, maybe you tend to be more anxious and sad on Sunday nights, or you’re generally in a better mood on Tuesday afternoons. Using this data, you can find out the reasons behind these mood swings, and either change them or accept them calmly. By exploring your own emotions, you may know when you can immerse yourself in concentration, and when you should stop work and drink a cup of milk tea.