Blue Monday: Truth or lie?
Third Monday of January is no the saddest day of the year, no matter how many articles and tweets you read about it.
We are not going to talk around the issue, Blue Monday is just an formula invented by a communication agency to sell more travels.
In 2005, Sky Travel company established that the third Monday of January is the most depressive day of the 365 days of the year. The theory behind this Blue Monday is due to Porter Novelli communication agency. This company gathered a research from doctor Cliff Arnall in which he presented a supposedly mathematical formula ([W+(D-d)]xTQ/MxNA) it supposedly proved that this is the saddest day of the year.
What the communication agency said in its press release was that the best way to beat this depressing day is to pack up and go on a trip. What a coincidence.
The W is the weather, the D are debts, the d is the salary, the T is the time passed from christmas, the Q are the new year’s failures, the M the motivation and NA, the necessity to take action.
The formula reads as follows:
W: It’s cold, very cold
D: starts the hard January
d: the payday is far
T: christmas has finished more than two weeks ago
Q: you have failed in your New Year’s resolutions
M: today is Monday. Nobody likes Monday.
NA: with the beginning of the new year you feel the need to change your life.
At the other end there have appeared ideas to estimate the saddest day of the year. After few unscientific observations, it has been concluded that it is the third Friday of June, due to the increased number of social interactions, the weather, the nature, to the memory of childhood summers and the advance of holidays.
The formula seems to be logic and it could be accepted but, strictly speaking, it is not backed by any scientific endorsement and it lacks the empirical demonstration. For the moment, any significant differences have been observed in the mood of the people each Monday of January.
So you know, continue with your Monday and forget all those fallacies that are not backed by scientific knowledge and its method.
