Bare-Minimum Monday: A Cautionary Tale

“Bare-Minimum Monday” is the latest trend sweeping the nation. It’s exactly what it sounds like: doing the bare minimum on Mondays, essentially a form of quiet quitting. The goal is to take all the anxiety off the first day of the week and put it… somewhere else. But why should Mondays have all the fun? If you’re anything like me, you want to do the bare minimum everyday. Read on for how to transform the rest of your week into a stress-free paradise.

“Take a Day Off” Tuesday: After doing the bare minimum on Monday, you may notice that you have an enormous amount of work on your desk Tuesday morning. This is no good at all, so may I suggest you take it easy on Tuesday? In other words, don’t go to work at all. You have sick days for a reason. And that reason is to rest when you’re sick, which you are. Sick of working.

“Wake Up Late” Wednesday: You did the bare minimum on Monday, and you took Tuesday off, but you’re still exhausted. Honey, it’s called sleep debt, and you can’t fix it in 48 hours. The only solution is to sleep in on Wednesday. Turn your alarm off, close your blinds, and take a couple of Tylenol PMs. There’s nothing more satisfying than waking up at 2 p.m. — it means you’ve already completed half the day, and all you did was get out of bed! Wow.

“Throw Away Your Phone” Thursday: Well, it turns out that doing nothing for three days straight is coming back to bite you. Your boss’ emails about whether you’re “available” to do your “job” are getting increasingly stressful and honestly feel like a huge boundary violation. The best thing to do on Thursday is to simply throw away your phone. Yeah, just chuck it. Into the sea, if possible, or maybe throw it down a well. Somewhere no one can ever find it. After all, as my mother always says, the anxiety is coming from inside the phone. And she’s my local expert on phones, as she is the one who pays the phone bill.

“Forget About Your Job” Friday: By Friday, you should be ready to quit. It’s been a long week that started with doing the bare minimum and ended with a full digital detox — and there’s no reason to stop there. Get ready to totally forget about your job. And I don’t mean quit; I mean forget. Just ghost it. Never show up again. It’s just emails anyway. They don’t mean anything. They’re little strings of zeroes and ones, really. They’re nothing.

“Say Goodbye to Capitalism” Saturday: By the time the weekend rolls around, it’s probably time to think about an entirely new way of living. After all, you no longer have a phone or source of income, and your chances of getting a new job are slim (after all, you did ghost your last place of employment). So this time, bid farewell to capitalism. Sell all your belongings, break your lease, cash out the $42 you once put in an IRA. Set yourself free!

“Sail Away” Sunday: After a productive week of unlearning and renouncing everything you held dear your entire life, it’s time to take to the sea. After all, there’s nowhere else to go. Bon voyage!