Monday doesn’t have a good name. It always comes around seven days a week, carrying the weight of unfinished business, unanswered emails, and a certain kind of dread that sets in around Sunday evening. There’s even a name for that: the Sunday Scaries. That tells you something about how we’ve learned to get ready for the week ahead. Still, every Monday is just a morning. It’s the same number of hours as Thursday.
Work motivational quotes every Monday are part based on psychology and part on the simple fact that most people need a push. Not a lecture or a plan for getting things done; just one or two sentences to get them back on track before their inbox takes over. People share these quotes on Slack and stick them on the walls of their cubicles for a reason. At least in a small way, they work like a cup of coffee. They change the angle a little, but they don’t solve anything.
The saying “The secret of getting ahead is getting started” by Mark Twain has been around for more than one hundred years and still hits home. That’s important to note. It stays alive because it skips the part that most people try to avoid: the beginning. Arthur Ashe said something different, and maybe more useful: “Begin where you are.” Take what you have and use it. “Do what you can.” You can really use that one on a Monday when the space between where you are and where you want to be feels too big. It cuts down the problem to something that can be solved.
Some Monday quotes might hit home the most when they don’t try to make you feel better. “Either you run the day or the day runs you” by Jim Rohn is not an attempt to make Monday sound exciting. It just makes the choice clear. Arnold Schwarzenegger said something similar: “Every morning you can either stay asleep with your dreams or get up and go after them.” Depending on what kind of Monday you’re having, that might make you feel energized or a little worn out, but being honest is always helpful.
A type of Monday motivation that works is one that is a little self-aware about everything. “So. Monday,” Julio-Alexi Genao wrote. We meet again. We’ll never be friends, but maybe we can get past our dislike for each other and form a better relationship. That one gets passed around a lot in offices for a good reason. This is more honest than most motivational content because it talks about the resistance instead of acting like it doesn’t exist. On a Monday morning, people like being met where they are, not where someone thinks they should be.
It’s not the quotes that promise change that tend to hold up the best over time. They only want to know what to do next. Maria Robinson said: “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” “Change that lasts, real change, happens one step at a time,” said Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Both of these feel like they fit with a Monday in a way that a more general statement about potential or greatness doesn’t quite do. They’re sized for a morning, not a lifetime.
When you look at the long history of Monday motivation culture, from Roosevelt to Beyoncé to Zig Ziglar, you get the sense that what people really want is permission. The freedom to start out badly, to start out tired, and to keep going even though things aren’t perfect. The phrase “Done is better than perfect” by Sheryl Sandberg is likely used more in the workplace on Mondays than almost anything else. It helps people begin when they feel like the task they need to do is too big or not clear enough to do in a clear way.
There is a Monday quote by Maya Angelou that might be the most useful: “Try to be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.” It shifts focus to other things at a time when most people are thinking about themselves and their lists of things they need to do. When you start your Monday by being kind to a coworker, things tend to go differently than when you start your Monday by being efficient to protect yourself. That’s not a promise. But it seems like a good bet.
