Friday, but now with 100% more real weekend taste. Let’s dig in.

This just wouldn’t be a newsletter about the weird future of work without a fresh new moral panic. The favorite phrase of productivity writers everywhere last quarter was “quiet quitting.”

If you somehow didn’t have an internet connection for the last 4 months and missed this crock, it goes a little like this: Some kids on Tiktok spun up the “quiet quitting” phrase to describe an approach to work that doesn’t totally take over their lives and melt their brains. In their patented process papers like the WSJ and Bloomberg spun it up to Mach Crisis and spat it back out as a new Gen Z Thing that’s destroying the workplace. The prophecy foretold a huge wave of disaffected, lying non-workers luxuriating on the clock and undermining all that we hold dear.

It doesn’t really matter that “quiet quitting” was total bullshit.

The truth is people have been worn out by the way work, well, works for decades. The “Sunday Scaries” is a commonly-known trope among desk workers where you get all worked up Sunday night, terrified of the over-committed, stressed-out Monday to come.

After a while, this “trend” petered out. So with “quiet quitting” not generating clicks any longer we need a new wave of badge-clutching: meet “Bare Minimum Mondays.”

Don’t be fooled; this TOTALLY NEW and ALL-ENGROSSING TREND is hitting your YOUNG AND UNDERPAID SERVANTS WORKPLACE HEROES where each Monday they just sit at home, watch Netflix, rip ferocious bong loads, and not do the 46 tasks you assigned them in Trello — all while getting PAID!

Bombast aside, the real “movement” here is just young workers reminding themselves that they can’t do everything all of the time at an extremely high level of output. It’s just not productive to get all whacked-out first thing Monday AM and panic your way into the week.

In motor racing, we have this little phrase, “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” I think it came from the Navy SEALs, but I like to think it’s ours. Anyways, the point I’m making here is you get more done, more quickly by employing some moderation when setting your goals, easing into big projects, and honing your ability to let that which does not matter truly slide. (nsfw-ish)

Managers, you’ve got a golden opportunity here. Young workers have spent a significant amount of their short careers so far in remote-only environments with unpredictable job markets — bump the hardcore meetings off of Monday and get your team into the week on the right foot.

The work-world won’t collapse if you hold your All Hands on Tuesday. I promise.

ON THE INTERNETS

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A real “Inverse Cramer” ETF is coming

TWEET OF THE WEEK

Rock on, POTUS baby.

See ya next week

— 💬 The EiT Crew at Status Hero