What are the Sunday scaries? 

The Sunday scaries, also known as the “Sunday blues,” are the sense of anxiety or dread you feel on a Sunday night before returning to work on Monday. You might recognize the Sunday scaries as the pit in your stomach that forms on Sunday evening as the last hours of the weekend tick away and the beginning of the workweek closes in. The Sunday scaries are a form of “anticipatory anxiety” since they cause you to feel anxiety about an event that hasn’t happened yet. 

Tips to combat the Sunday scaries

If you’re struggling with the Sunday scaries, we’re here to help. While the dread that fills your Sunday nights can feel overwhelming, there are several actions you can take to reduce—or even eliminate—the fear that takes hold on Sunday evenings. 

Remember, you’re not alone in this. The Sunday scaries are related to self-care, but they’re really a work issue. They’re also a valid feeling of anticipatory anxiety that many people, likely including your colleagues and peers, struggle with. By taking steps to identify the cause of your anxiety and prioritize your well-being, you can overcome your Sunday night dread. 

1. Determine the cause of your Sunday scaries 

Without a clear root cause, the Sunday scaries can feel insurmountable. One moment you’re enjoying your weekend, and the next you’re hit with a feeling of impending doom or unease that you just can’t shake. Instead of writing off this sense of dread as a natural reaction to the end of the weekend, focus on what might be causing the feeling. Ask yourself, is there anything going on at work that you feel unprepared for? Are you happy in your role, or are you feeling stagnant? What’s your work-life balance like? 

Determining the specific source of your Sunday-night dread is the first step to overcoming it. Once you have a better idea of what might be causing your feelings, you can brainstorm steps to fix the origin—like prioritizing your most important work to increase your productivity and reduce missed deadlines.

2. Try anxiety-coping techniques 

The Sunday scaries are both a work and a well-being challenge. Since the Sunday blues manifest in feelings akin to feelings of anxiety, using anxiety-management and relaxation techniques can help you manage your levels of Sunday-related stress. Try coping strategies like:

• Practicing mindfulness and gratitude 
• Using deep breathing exercises 
• Keeping a work journal to provide clarity and awareness around complicated work situations
• Taking a long walk or meditating 
• Using visualization techniques or reciting positive affirmations 

Of course, these are short-term strategies that will help control your feelings of Sunday-night anxiety in the moment. To curb these feelings long-term, you’ll want to focus on actionable changes you can make to your work routine. 

3. Create a relaxing Sunday

Since the Sunday scaries lead to increased stress, one of the best ways to combat them is by prioritizing an otherwise stress-free Sunday night. Even though it’s tempting, try not to push all of your weekend responsibilities, like household chores or grocery shopping, to Sunday. Instead, knock out your essential weekend to-dos on Friday evening or Saturday morning to give yourself space to breathe and relax on Sunday. 

You can also incorporate a relaxing routine into your Sunday night. Creating a routine will help you wind down, reducing the stress you’d otherwise feel about the upcoming week. Plus, creating a relaxing routine you enjoy gives you something to look forward to on Sunday night, which can reduce your anxiety around the end of the weekend. Try adding stress-management techniques to your routine, like reading a book before bed, taking a warm bath, or meditating. 

4. Plan something fun on Monday

Like giving yourself something to look forward to on Sunday evening with a Sunday night routine, planning something fun for Monday can make the start of the week a little less intimidating. It can be something small, like grabbing a cup of coffee before work. Or you can schedule time for something you enjoy, like watching a favorite TV show or cooking a favorite meal. Bonus points if it doubles as something relaxing, like taking a walk or doing yoga. Or, plan an event that will make Monday your favorite day of the week, like a standing happy hour or dinner with a friend. You could also create a productive morning routine to start your Monday fresh and energized. 

5. Prioritize your work-life balance 

As you may have guessed from our first few tips, prioritizing your work-life balance is key to curbing the Sunday scaries. And while making time for yourself is an important part of developing a successful work-life balance, it will take more than a few bubble baths. 

Truly prioritizing your work-life balance means reframing how you think about work and what’s required to succeed. According to the Anatomy of Work Index, 40% of all workers think burnout is an inevitable part of success. 

Use strategies to achieve a healthier work-life balance. These could include: 

• Setting clear boundaries around when you’re online
• Reducing the amount of work activities you do outside the office
• Learning how to say no if you’re overscheduled

6. Use “do not disturb” and block notifications when you’re off the clock 

Technology has connected us—and also made us more distracted. According to the Anatomy of Work, over a third of workers feel overwhelmed by persistent pings. What’s more, workers are facing technology overload: 42% of workers are spending more time on email than one year ago, and 56% feel they need to respond immediately to notifications. 

Despite this, only 37% of all workers snooze notifications to limit notifications. Look for tools that offer a “do not disturb” function so you can block app notifications when you’re offline. This sets clear boundaries and gives yourself time away from the hustle and bustle of work on evenings and weekends. After all, your time is your time. When you’re off, you should be fully off(line). 

7. Plan out your work week

One root cause of the Sunday scaries is feeling overwhelmed or unprepared for the week ahead. Perhaps you have looming deadlines you’re not sure you’ll be able to meet, or you have an upcoming presentation you don’t feel ready to present. Creating a weekly work plan can help. 

A weekly work plan breaks down and organizes your weekly tasks into a manageable overview, so you can see what you need to do and by when. Weekly work plans also allow you to prioritize tasks and set due dates, giving you visibility into your upcoming week. Since weekly work plans help you break down large tasks into smaller to-dos and give you a view of your week at a glance, they’re perfect for balancing your workload. And a balanced workload means less stress during the week—and less anxiety on Sunday. 

8. Know when to ask for help

It’s important to recognize the signs that the Sunday scaries are becoming something more serious, like depression or an anxiety disorder. If the above strategies aren’t helping diminish your feelings of Sunday-night dread, or if your work anxiety is significantly impacting your work or personal life, it might be time to take further action. Talk to your manager, mentor, or HR department about workplace benefits that might help. Remember, mental health is health. It’s important to prioritize it—in the workplace and beyond. 

SPF Factors Explained

It needn’t be a sweltering day to feel the full force of the sunshine. Even in overcast conditions, sunlight remains extremely strong, penetrating clouds and even glass.

And with that sunlight, come plentiful supplies of UV rays. These can covertly and very gradually damage the skin, cause wrinkles, and increase the chance of developing skin cancer, especially if skin is over-exposed and under-protected.

While we won’t be suggesting you avoid the sun completely or give up that golden tan, you can minimise the risk of sun damage by getting to know what’s on your sun cream bottle, and what that means for your sun protection.

Take a look at our top tips below about what SPF means, how SPF works, and how often you should apply sun cream.

Understanding your sunscreen bottle

What does the SPF number mean? 

SPF stands for sun protection factor which acts as a yardstick for the length of time the sun’s UV radiation will take to burn your skin versus if you were unprotected.

For example, an SPF 30 sun cream should take you 30 times longer to burn than if you were wearing no sun cream, as it allows around 3% of UVB rays to reach your skin. Likewise, SPF 50 would take 50 times longer to make you burn and allows around just 2% of UVB rays through. This only applies, of course, if you are applying sun lotion as directed on the bottle and reapplying as instructed.

What does UVA and UVB mean?

Beyond what SPF means, your sun lotion bottle provides much more vital info about its sun protection level, including the differences between UVA and UVB.

UVA (ultraviolet A) penetrates the skin more deeply than UVB and has a longer-lasting effect. These types of rays are closely linked with skin cancer and premature ageing, such as wrinkles, leathery skin, and sun spots. UVB (ultraviolet B) has shorter wavelengths than UVA and is more commonly displayed on sun cream bottles; it is also the main cause of sunburn and is linked with some skin cancers.

Where is the expiry date on sun cream?

Not had a chance to buy new sunscreen this summer? Are you wondering how long sun cream lasts as you’re looking to apply last year’s bottle?

To know when suncream expires, all you need to do is look out for the symbol that looks like an open jar on the sunscreen bottle. This has a number inside that tells you how long the product should be used after it has been opened.

For example, if you see “12M” in the open jar, then the sun cream should be used within 12 months of cracking it open. After that time, the sun cream becomes ineffective – no matter how high the sun protection factor is. As such, try to remember when you last opened it and, if you know you used it last year, it’s time to buy a fresh one.

How often should I apply sun cream and how much should I be wearing?

While many dermatologists will recommend wearing sun cream everyday to provide constant sun protection (yes, even during the winter), during summer, when the sun is at its hottest, you should consider reapplying sun lotion every two hours. If you are out and about during the hottest point of the day, have sensitive skin, go swimming, or sweat a lot, you may need to increase the frequency.

As for how much sun cream you should apply, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends 35ml (around seven teaspoons) for all over body coverage. This amount of sun cream should cover a teaspoon on the head and neck, one teaspoon on each arm, each leg, your front, and your back.

Generally, we don’t apply enough sun cream to our bodies which means, while we think we’re doing everything we can to protect our skin, we could be greatly reducing our level of sun protection. If in doubt, apply more, not less.

What SPF should I use?

It goes without saying that, for maximum sun protection, a higher SPF is advised.

.The decision comes down to what you know about your skin. Are you prone to burning at the first sight of sun? Is your skin pale? Have you any skin conditions? If you know your skin has a low tolerance to sun exposure, it is always better to be over-cautious with sun protection and opt for a higher SPF, even if it is cloudy.

Other than sun protection factor, what else should you be looking for on your sunscreen bottle? Water-resistant sun creams are most effective as they are able to wick away sweat, rain, and swimming water. Sprays don’t always play well with windy weather and tanning oils – which develop a deeper tan through attracting more UVB rays – will deepen your chance of burning.

Also don’t forget to consult the UVA and UVB ratings on the bottle when choosing between sun creams: they should say ‘high’ or ‘very high’ or provide a star rating of 4 or more (the higher the rating, the better).

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by Leslie Shreve

Your Inbox is meant to bring e-mail IN. It’s not meant to live there forever and ever. What comes in must go back out again. It’s no different than the physical inbox on your desk for papers, files and other incoming mail. It’s also no different than voice mail for your office phone or your cell phone. All of this information is not supposed to accumulate.

Here are 4 fundamentals to help you lighten the load in your Inbox

1. Your Inbox is NOT a file cabinet, nor a To-Do list.

Your Inbox is meant to bring e-mail IN. It’s not meant to live there forever and ever. What comes in must go back out again. It’s no different than the physical inbox on your desk for papers, files and other incoming mail. It’s also no different than voice mail for your office phone or your cell phone. All of this information is not supposed to accumulate. It’s meant to keep flowing forward to its next temporary station or permanent location.

2. E-mail can be clutter, too.

Just like all the other aforementioned incoming bits of data, your e-mail can build up and become clutter, just like paper and files can on your desk. So remember this next bit: “Clutter is unmade decisions.” You are avoiding or deferring decisions when you let your many inboxes fill up with stuff.

E-mail is meant to be read, unless you know immediately it’s trash or spam. Otherwise read it, then STOP. Make a decision about the content of the e-mail and it’s usefulness to you.

When I worked with my client, the associate, he immediately recognized that much of what he had kept was now useless or meaningless since it was related to completed tasks and projects and time had passed.

Check your e-mail Inbox. How far back are you holding e-mails? A year? Two years? More? How is this information useful to you?

3. Better safe than sorry.

Sometimes it’s true… you have to hold on to e-mail forever and ever due to legal, financial and/or other rules and regulations existing in your job, career or industry. However, even if that’s true, that doesn’t mean these e-mails are best kept in your Inbox OR in the folders on the left. Nope, sorry. They need to go somewhere else.

If you don’t reference older e-mails very much – or at all – once the task, job, project, program or client work is completed, consider storing e-mails and attachments elsewhere.

Consolidate information in your hard drive according to project, job, department, program or client. Or you can archive them in your e-mail system by year or in another structure that helps you find them fast when you actually do need to find them later.

4. For now or for later?

If you don’t already have a few folders set up on the left side of your screen, this is a handy place to keep active and ongoing e-mails. While the associate I worked with identified lots and lots of old, obsolete or useless information in his Inbox, some of these were, at one time, useful. So once your e-mails become reference information, they need to come out of the Inbox.

While your work is in progress, you can set up folders on the left, under the Inbox for tracking and storing ongoing work or projects. But… keep the final destination of this information in mind, especially if you’re meant to be saving all client information, for example, in your hard drive according to company guidelines or as hard copies in a file drawer.

Don’t use e-mail folders as a stepping stone if the information is really meant to stay somewhere else on a more permanent basis. If that’s the case, then, with few exceptions, it’s better to get these e-mails and their attachments to their permanent location right away, instead of letting them accumulate. I’ve seen this “stepping stone” approach backfire more than once and the frustration and lost time was incredible.

Handheld Spin Scrubber Makes Cleaning Effort-Free

Why is the Synoshi Spin Power Scrubber so effective at deep cleaning?

Synoshi is so effective at deep cleaning because of its powerful two-gear electric motor that works to spin scrubbers, stiff bristle brushes, and sponges incredibly fast to remove even the deepest grime and nasty mold from every type of surface. Not only is it effective at removing grime and mold, but it can also help kill bacteria and diseases that may grow in hard-to-reach places like under drain caps, behind the toilet, and in hard-to-clean spaces like the cracks in floor tiles and cramped corners.

Another reason that Synoshi is so effective at deep cleaning is that it is hand-held and cordless, and because of this, it can scrub places that other tools may not be able to reach. Additionally, the power scrubber can rotate a stiff bristle brush so quickly and with so much strength that grime has no chance to stick around.

Addiction recovery is a lifelong process. There will be bumps in the road, and you will always need to stay vigilant on your journey to a better life. That said, incorporating healthy habits into your daily routine can help make sobriety easier. Today, How to Organize Your Life provides some tips on how to do just that.

Get Enough Sleep

A good night’s rest is crucial for both your physical and mental health. It can be hard to stick to a regular sleep schedule when you’re first getting sober, but you must try. A lack of sleep can lead to relapse and a host of other health issues. Here are some tips for achieving a healthy sleep rhythm:

• Establish a regular sleep schedule: Going to bed and waking up at the same time every day will help your body regulate its natural sleep rhythm.
• Avoid caffeine and alcohol before bed: Caffeine can keep you awake for hours after drinking it, while alcohol can disrupt your sleep cycle and make it harder to fall asleep.
• Avoid working or using electronic devices in bed: Working on your laptop or watching television in bed can make it harder to fall asleep and get the rest you need.
• Get plenty of exercise during the day: Exercise helps promote good sleep hygiene by tiredness your body and making it easier to fall asleep at night.
• Make sure your bedroom is dark, quiet, and comfortable: Keeping your environment calm and stress-free will help you relax and fall asleep more easily.

Start the Day Strong

The morning is a critical time of day; it’s when we get ready for the day ahead and set the tone for how we’ll be feeling. Developing a healthy morning routine is important for ensuring we’re off to a good start. Some things you may want to include in your morning routine are:

• Waking up early enough to have some time to yourself.
• Getting dressed in comfortable clothes.
• Making breakfast and/or drinking a healthy smoothie.
• Reading or doing some quiet meditation or mindfulness exercises.
• Spending some time outdoors, if possible.
• Eliminating social media from your morning routine.

Having these things in place as part of your morning routine can help you feel more relaxed and centered as you start your day. It can also help set the tone for how the day will go, and give you the energy you need to take on whatever comes your way.

Eat Healthily

A healthy diet will help your body heal from the damage caused by addiction and give you the energy you need to stay sober. Avoid processed foods and sugar as much as possible, and try to get plenty of fruits, vegetables, and protein. While you’re at it, limit your caffeine intake; too much caffeine can exacerbate anxiety and negatively impact your sleep.

Exercise

Exercise releases endorphins, which have mood-boosting effects. It also helps reduce stress, improve sleep, and increase energy levels. All of these things are essential to maintaining sobriety, so find a physical activity (e.g., running, cycling, weightlifting, etc.) that you can commit to at least four days a week.

Take Breaks

When you’re feeling overwhelmed or like you’re about to lose your cool, take a break. Step away from the situation and take some deep breaths. Doing so will help you avoid saying or doing something you might regret later.

Connect with Others

Isolation is one of the main triggers for relapse, so it’s essential to stay connected with friends and family members who support your sobriety. Attend meetings, join a sober social group, or volunteer — do anything that gets you around others who understand what you’re going through.

Conclusion

Sobriety is a difficult but rewarding journey. Incorporating healthy habits into your everyday life can make it easier to maintain your sobriety long-term. So get plenty of rest, establish a morning routine, eat healthily, connect with others, and implement the other tips above. Your recovery and your overall life will benefit significantly as you put in the effort!

How to Organize Your Life is here to provide organizational tips and promote books and courses to help you get as organized as possible. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out!