Yes, New Yorkers, it’s OK to slow down a bit.
Marisa Jo Mayes, startup co-founder of Spacetime Monotasking and a digital creator in Phoenix, Ariz., recently stole the Internet’s attention for coining “Bare Minimum Mondays,” an ethos which prioritizes doing less work on most people’s least favorite day of the week.
Ahead, a look at BMM’s origin story and how you can implement the practice yourself.
How it started
During Mayes’ first year of self-employment after leaving corporate America, she found herself feeling overwhelmed, stuck in burnout and struggling to operate.
“On Sunday evenings, I used to feel a ball of anxiety in my stomach (the ‘Sunday Scaries’) when thinking about all the things I needed to do on Monday,” she said. “I would wake up on Monday already feeling behind, overwhelmed and anxious. This feeling would only compound as the week continued. I was trying to get myself to ‘overachieve’ my way out of the burnout I was experiencing, but of course, that didn’t work.”
One Monday in March last year, Mayes was so fed up with the “instant panic” that she gave herself permission to just do the bare minimum for work that day.
“It led me to have one of the least stressful (as well as productive) Mondays I’d had in a while, so I wanted to investigate why,” she said. “[It] was extremely liberating, because I’d been conditioned by hustle culture/toxic productivity culture to believe that my worth is directly tied to my productivity and output.”
Mayes believes alleviating that pressure and choosing to cut herself some slack was a much-needed change of mindset going into the beginning of the week, which in turn allowed her to be productive again. “I’ve been doing it ever since,” she said.
What BMM looks like
Come Monday, the first two hours of Mayes’ day are phone- and laptop-free before stepping into what she calls her work avatar.
“This gives me time to prioritize my state of mind before immediately worrying what other people need from me, and I feel much better as a result,” she said. Instead, she might run errands she didn’t get to over the weekend, works on a creative project, gets extra rest or exercises.
The “work” segment of her day is a three- to four-hour window of essential tasks. “I make sure that the tasks I assign myself are urgent, important or both, and everything else waits until Tuesday, unless it feels good to keep working on Monday,” she said.
For Mayes, a “must-do” task is one that has direct consequences if it’s not completed.
To figure out what that means for you, look at your daily list and ask yourself if there are any “wishful thinking” tasks on the list and then take them off, said Mayes.
“You can get to them if you have the capacity, but don’t expect it of yourself,” she said.
Of course, differentiating between what’s a priority and what isn’t can be where things get tricky.
“The hard part for a lot of people is actually determining this for themselves — we’re often made to believe that everything is absolutely urgent, when a lot of tasks can actually wait a day or two,” said Mayes.
“Obviously, this will depend on the job and industry, but the idea is to get real with yourself and see where you might be putting too much unnecessary urgency on certain things — you might be able to handle the constant doses of stress in the short term, but it’s not good for the nervous system to always feel like there’s an emergency.”
How to make BMM work for you
Yes, the concept of BMMs can be modified to fit your individual needs and schedule.
“I totally understand how my version of BMM isn’t realistic for everyone — I’m self-employed, I work from home and I’m not a mom. I never meant for this to be something that corporate employees do exactly as I do, as our situations are not the same,” said Mayes.
Nevertheless, Mayes would challenge people to figure out what their own version of BMM looks like, even if it’s, say, a Bare Minimum Friday or Bare Minimum Sunday morning.
“This could mean taking a few tasks off your plate, delegating to team members, introducing more self-compassion, saying no to social gatherings after work, taking a longer lunch, going on Do Not Disturb more — there are really no rules here,” she said.
Mayes recommends figuring out where you’re putting unnecessary pressure on yourself which is often the source of stress in the first place.
“I would also remind people that overworking themselves to the point of burnout is not an effective productivity strategy,” she said.
Mayes’ other top tips to banish burnout
BMM isn’t the only practice Mayes employs to keep work-life balance in a good place.
“I urge people to notice how they spend the first 15 minutes of their day,” said Mayes.
Some questioning Mayes suggests: Are you mentally clocking in before you actually need to? Are you jumping right into your work avatar before you actually need to? How might you be able to infuse a few more moments of “being a person” before you turn into an employee?
“Waking up and immediately giving your attention to work before you even take a sip of water or one deep breath is a one-way ticket to burnout,” she said.
Mayes is also a proponent of having strict tech boundaries. “People are not entitled to 24/7 access to you,” she said.
Mayes said to turn on your phone’s “Do Not Disturb” mode and to keep it out of reach when doing mind-intensive projects, put focus blocks on your calendar to act as meetings with yourself and start protecting your focus and attention by any other means you find helpful.
“Just because someone sends a notification to your device does not mean you have to stop everything on your side to intercept it,” she said. “Start taking your focus more seriously.”
