The first day of the workweek has long been mythologized as the enemy. Monday. A symbol of pressure, return, responsibility. A five-letter word synonymous with early alarms, inbox avalanches, tight deadlines, and a silent obligation to resume being someone for everyone—except yourself. For generations of women navigating the dual performance of life and labor, Monday has been the day the masks reattach, the roleplay resumes, and the body disappears into the schedule.
But what if Monday didn’t have to be a battlefield?
What if it could be a ceremony?
Welcome to the emergent counter-practice known as Bare Minimum Mondays, a movement that quietly challenges our inherited relationship with labor, value, and worth. Originated by Maris Mayes and echoed across millions of screens, this ritualized redefinition is not just about doing less, it’s about becoming more by realigning the rhythm of your week to match the reality of your nervous system.
To adopt Bare Minimum Mondays as a practice is to issue a subtle but profound rejection of hustle mythology and the chronic capitalism embedded into the female psyche. It’s not just another productivity hack, it’s a boundary. A spiritual one. A protective field around your energy, your focus, and your personhood.
This isn’t about slacking off. This is about healing. It’s about returning to the workweek with your self intact.
Let’s expand this concept and explore how women, especially those navigating emotional labor, domestic invisibility, professional overachievement, or quiet burnout, can adopt this framework not as a weekly cheat code, but as a strategy for self-preservation and soul reclamation.
Before we construct the ritual of Bare Minimum Mondays, we must first deconstruct the psychological violence of the standard Monday. In many ways, the modern Monday is designed to be extractive. It signals the recommencement of performance. For many women, that performance is layered.
It’s not just about returning to your job. It’s about managing your household’s logistics, re-entering a digital world of group chats and unread emails, embodying optimism for your children or your team, and psychologically preparing yourself to be interrupted, relied upon, and needed all over again.
Sundays have become anticipatory grief. A countdown to the moment your personal life becomes secondary again. This “Sunday Scaries” phenomenon is no accident—it’s a byproduct of a system that values economic output more than embodied presence.
And for women—especially those socialized to be caregivers, nurturers, peacemakers, or high performers—the shift into the workweek is not a switch. It is a rupture.
Bare Minimum Mondays ask us to treat that rupture like a wound, not a default.
It asks a new question:
What if your nervous system gets to lead the week, not your calendar?
To implement Bare Minimum Mondays in a way that is sacred and sustainable, you must first understand that this is not about lowering your standards. It is about raising your threshold for self-respect. The process begins with reframing your priorities—from deliverables to dignity, from performance to preservation.