“Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.”
– Oscar Wilde
Contents
Explanation
So here are the days of the week in the order we are used to seeing them, AKA “Standard Order”.
Standard Order
This is typically the order you’d see days on email and paper calendars, organizers, and so on.
But more critically, for better (or usually worse), this is likely the way you visualize the order in your mind. Perhaps not the words listed out exactly, but more “feelings” associated with the position of the days.
For example, that:
- Sunday is the end of something or the beginning of something
- Monday is a beginning, typically associated with the start of work or school
- Wednesday feels like it’s in the middle— halfway through, and therefore called “hump day”
- Friday feels like you completed something
This is especially prevalent among office workers and others who have a typical 9 to 5, five day per week work structure.
And interestingly, how you feel is not only based on what happens on the days themselves, but also associations tied to the RELATIVE ORDER of the days – which is something we’ll try to exploit in this hack.
The Feels
We have largely been conditioned by school and work cycles to dread the work week and anticipate the weekend, and so many of us have these emotional associations:
SUNDAY
Good because I’m off, but anxiety or even depression at what is coming – the “Sunday Blues” or “Sunday Scaries”
MONDAY
Dread or irritation and resignation to a long road ahead
TUESDAY
Better than Monday, but still not close enough to the finish line
WEDNESDAY
A glimmer of hope, a shift past the midpoint
THURSDAY
The last “real” day, and a lifting of spirits for the end is in sight
FRIDAY
Joy and relief for having made it, along with an anticipation for the evening and the following day
SATURDAY
Excitement from rest or recreation, and a confidence opposite the mood of the previous Sunday
There is No Beginning or End
Now there isn’t a start or end to the days of the week since they repeat, and so we could represent the order as follows, and start anywhere:
This visualization would put all the days on equal footing.
However, there is some value in creating a linear representation having certain days take on significance of our choosing.
Solution: The Kairos Calendar
A solution to the tyranny of these labels is simply to reorder the days.
A Kairologic Order
Remember, the days are ultimately cyclical, so this KAIROLOGIC ORDER makes just as much sense as the STANDARD ORDER – if you want it to.
The beauty of this technique is that it offsets the “bad days” (the bulk of the work week) to the middle and end of the week:
The next step is simply to highlight each day as it comes, so for example, you’d represent MON as:
Similarly, the other days can be highlighted as they come. For example, on WED:
On the Kairos Calendar, (using a kairologically re-ordered September 2023 in this example), you’d cross off the days as you complete them.
Finishing a Monday would be represented as:
September 2023
While Wednesday would be “almost done” with the week:
September 2023
Benefits of the Kairos Calendar
- As you progress marking off the days in this way, pretty soon Monday will start to “feel” like the middle, and you will begin to “feel” like you’re always in the second half of the week, with the finish line clearly in sight.
- You’ll also start noticing that, if you’re relatively stress-free on FRI and SAT, you’ll forget to mark them off and it will seem you’re always starting from the SUN/MON midpoint onward, making the days with a negative association seem to pass that much faster.
Summary
Step 1: Get a whiteboard or piece of paper and write/print out the days in the Kairological order, or download the Kairos Calendar PDF.
Step 2: Place the Calendar in a prominent place, somewhere where you’ll be forced to see it often, such as on your refrigerator or desktop
Step 3: Using an indicator (magnet, dry-erase marker line, etc.) highlight the current day of the week or cross out days that have already passed on the calendar
Step 4: Begin to notice how you feel about the relative place of the days as time goes on.
- Concentrate on this feeling, amplifying the new, more positive association with Monday as “halfway through”, or with Wednesday as “just one more day left!”