I’m going to buy a 2025 wall calendar soon. I remembered the Focused calendar and it made me think again about what day to start your week.
For decades I have always started my week on a Sunday. I do understand the basis of starting it on a Monday.
The other day, I changed my digital calendar view to Monday start. But immediately, someone asked me about a certain day (a Friday in Dec) and I immediately gave them the wrong date since I’m so used to having Fridays being the second to last column.
I guess I’m wondering is for those that changed from Sunday to Monday start (after decades of Sunday starts), was it a big challenge? And are there those that tried it and just gave up?
That’s my concern - that it’s not worth trying to change at this point in my life. I’m not convinced of the pros (without doing it) but the downside may just be too big to overcome.
It’s not a problem for us in the Uk and Europe because we’ve followed the ISO International Standard of Monday since the 1940s… Nobody thinks of Sunday as being anything but last day of the week.
Don’t you have nursery rhymes?
Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
This is the end
Of Solomon Grundy
It would completely ruin the rhyme scheme to have him buried on Saturday…
After all these years I wouldn’t change from Sunday start even though that makes no logical sense. It’s just a religious convention.
I just wanted to point out that for many years a company I worked for used a calendar with 13 months per year with 28 days per month. Every so often they would have a five week long leap month to realign with the year. Worked great for production, I suppose, but it was company wide.
Like most Americans I was accustomed to the Sunday start, it didn’t take long to get used to Monday start. My digital calendars tint the weekend days. Ponder this: weekend days should be at the end of the week.
I grew up in the US with Sunday as the first day of the week. Apparently, according to the site linked below, that convention goes back to Babylonia as well as Greece and Rome when the first day of the week was named after their mightiest of gods, the Sun.
I don’t feel any need to change personally, but YMMV.
Monday person here. A few months ago I became intrigued by the possibility of considering Sunday the start of the week (which would make sense for weekly planning and review, etc.) but it didn’t stick.
Funny. About two weeks ago I looked at my Fantastical on iPhone. I realized it was a bit weird that the week started with Sunday, so I switched it.
Logically, Monday is the first day. That makes total sense to me when I think about it. In practice, I couldn’t stand Monday as the start of the week. I’m back to Sunday and happy
I’ve been back and forth and had Outlook set to Sunday. But thinking about the ISO standard made me realize I think about Monday as the beginning of the week. It certainly is the beginning of the work week. Even after I retire, I think I’ll still think of it as the beginning of the week.
Having stopped to think about it, I realized that we refer to Saturday and Sunday as the “week end.” So more weight for Sunday ending the week
rather than starting it.
A quick skim of search results suggests that Sunday beginning the week originated with religious traditions.
Nobody thinks of Sunday as being anything but last day of the week.
