What is 'Bare Minimum Monday'? Understanding the work culture TikTok trend

Hybrid and remote work models are changing the way workers approach work life balance. (Pixabay - Pexels.com)

Over recent years, new workplace terminology has emerged that aims to label various approaches to work-life balance and work culture. Recent additions include “Quiet Quitting,” “Sunday Scaries,” and now – the latest addition to the lexicon – “Bare Minimum Monday.”

Similar to “quiet quitting,” which involves doing just the minimum requirements of one’s job, “Bare Minimum Monday” entails mustering minimum effort on the first day of the work week.

Marisa Jo Mayes, who posts wellness content to her TikTok account and has more than 154,000 followers, introduced the “Bare Minimum Monday” concept to the social media platform over the last few months.

“It prevents burnout for me and it makes me feel better overall,” she said in one of her videos. “It’s really changed my life. Before I started doing ‘Bare Minimum Monday’ I was physically making myself sick with stress. And I couldn’t produce anything because of the level of burnout I have reached. I wasn’t being productive doing it the other way.”

Her “Bare Minimum Mondays” entails working from the couch instead of a desk and ignoring all “wishful thinking tasks” – which are more difficult tasks that can be left without consequences – and only focusing on one checklist item at a time, instead of overwhelming yourself with multitasking.

“Multitasking,” she said in one of her videos, “is a one-way ticket to overwhelm and having everything take longer.”

In an essay for Insider, Mayes wrote that on a “Bare Minimum Monday,” she doesn’t take meetings and takes it slow for the first two hours. “I'll do some reading, some journaling, maybe some stuff around the house. It's two hours of no technology — no checking email — just doing whatever I need to do to feel good starting my day,” she said.

An important distinction, however, is that Mayes is self-employed.

IS WORKING ON MONDAY SOON TO BE A THING OF THE PAST?

While Mayes keeps her Monday workload light, some workers are dropping Mondays altogether. Several municipalities across Canada, for instance, are in the process of creating a policy regarding four-day work weeks, which could involve not working on a Monday.

Up to seven rural municipalities across Ontario have implemented a four-day work week for staff, as have two municipalities in eastern Canada, and one in Alberta.

Employees at municipalities where the four-day work-week has been implemented have the option of taking either Monday or Friday off to boost their work-life-balance and prevent burnout.

A 2022 Canadian survey by recruitment firm Robert Half determined that 91 per cent of senior managers polled claimed they would support a four-day work week for their team, and most managers anticipate that their company will transition to a shorter working week within the next five years.

The poll suggested that offering workers the option of a four-day work week could support employee retention, productivity and wellbeing.

One of the world’s largest four-day work week trials, in the U.K., found that 61 per cent of companies that shed one day off their work week from June to December of this year will continue with fewer work hours to promote work-life balance.

Ross Wainwright, CEO of Toronto software-company Alida, told CP24 that implementing four-day work weeks for his company’s 500 employees at the start of June, 2022, led to “employees that are clearly happier and more balanced.”