Like clockwork, 5 p.m. on a Sunday, flashes of unread emails and notifications for tomorrow’s upcoming meetings start. Your shoulders tense, your stomach knots. You have a case of the Sunday scaries.
This unsettling feeling is a form of anticipatory anxiety that creeps in as the weekend draws to a close and Monday looms with the responsibilities of the week ahead. If you can relate, you’re not alone: New data suggests the vast majority of workers experience this anxiety, and it also suggests some workers feel it worse than others.
Adobe Acrobat surveyed over 1,000 full-time employees and found 82% experience this sense of anxiety before the workweek even begins. For Gen Z respondents, that number creeps up to 94%. It also affects women more often than men.
For 31%, the Sunday scaries start before 5 p.m. even hits. That’s despite the fact that those affected spend 72 hours annually working on weekends to get ahead on the demands of the workweek.
The scaries are set off by all types of reasons. Looming layoffs or signs of economic uncertainty can lead workers to feel anxious about the near future. Burnout is the main culprit for 55% of respondents, followed by high workloads (50%), project deadlines (33%) and toxic work environments (31%).
Even admin-related tasks can add to the sense of dread, with organizing digital files or chasing down signatures mentioned by one in 15 respondents as triggers.
The Sunday scaries can affect anyone, but some suffer worse than others, Adobe says: Remote workers, for example, report getting the scaries just a few times per year. Those back in the office report getting them once or twice a month.
More than half of Fortune 100 companies now have a full-time office requirement, and research shows nearly 3 in 10 companies will demand five days a week in the office by the end of 2025. While 27% of those surveyed say their Sunday scaries have grown more intense over the past year, onsite workers are 47% more likely than remote workers to say their prework anxiety worsened over that time period.
Given the gap, it’s unsurprising workers are willing to quit their jobs for more flexible work, with 17% quitting in the past year because of changes to their working arrangements.
It’s not just a feeling. For 35% of those surveyed it manifests physically in headaches, tension, and fatigue, and 42% even lose sleep. It also impacts employers with nearly half respondents (46%) reporting that their Sunday scaries lead to a lack of motivation at a time where employees are already disengaged at work.
Anxiety is a normal human emotion. A big week at work or an upcoming important presentation is likely to trigger some feelings of anxiety. But if you spend every Sunday dreading the week ahead, it might require investigating further.