The Antidote to the Sunday Scaries

More than five decades on this planet and I still have not figured out how to quell the Sunday Scaries, until now.

First a reminder of the weekly affliction.

“Sunday Scaries” is a term that refers to the anxiety or dread you feel on Sunday, typically as the weekend wraps up and you start anticipating the workweek ahead. This feeling can stem from a variety of sources, such as stress over workload, a busy week ahead, or simply the end of a relaxing weekend.

In other words, Sunday nights can suck.

But in Mexico City last week at our Master Gunners creative workshop, I heard a cure for these Sunday Scaries.

I’ll call it Bruno Regalo’s “Sunday School.”

Bruno Regalo is the brilliant Global Chief Design Officer of TBWA’s DXD (Design by Disruption) Group. He’s also one of the leaders of TBWA\Chiat\Day LA.

Bruno is a self-taught creative superstar. And now I can share a window into how he fuels his success.

“Sunday School.”

At 6pm on Sunday evenings, when the “scaries” creep in and become acute, Bruno sets up shop for four hours of study.

In fact, he’s been doing this for 11 years! And he swears it makes his Sunday his true funday.

Here’s his routine in his own words.

“…1st hour is for analog study, books, and everything you can’t find online (for example, right now I’m studying everything that was printed and design editorials from the early 2000s). 

2nd hour is spent cataloging all the content from the first hour and then practicing it technically for an hour. 

The 3rd hour is dedicated to studying everything happening currently: inside and outside of advertising and everything visual (like movie opening credits, posters from new museum exhibits, visuals from campaigns launched that week, and everything I photographed or saved during the week — basically, everything that caught my attention). 

4th hour, I catalog all of this with specific captions and tags in an online system (some examples of tags and descriptions: film credits, oriental illustration, typographic animation, classical art, surrealism, etc.), and during this 4th hour, I execute and practice something specific from this final stage of study. This way, I always cover something from the past and something from the present/future.

The goal is simple: every week be better than my last week’s version [of what caught] my attention).

Now, isn’t that a whole lot better use of time than worrying about that Monday morning meeting?

Image: Photoleap_ai