What is Blue Monday? The origin
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Blue Monday is the saddest day of the year. This dubious honor corresponds to the third Monday in January, and its creators have even designed mathematical equations to prove their theory.
What is the origin of Blue Monday?
The “father” of blue Monday is British psychologist Cliff Arnall. Blue Monday” was born as part of an advertising campaign by the company Sky travel.
In an interview with “The Telegraph” newspaper, Arnall stated that he had reached this conclusion after analyzing the stress levels of his patients, which were becoming more acute as this date arrived.
Not content with that, the psychologist decided to create a mathematical equation to prove his theory. The response from the scientific community was overwhelming, pointing out that Arnall’s equations not only failed, but made no mathematical sense at all.
The equation
The equations in blue Monday are characterized by no units of measure. The first, published in 2006, focused on the time we spend on travel delays, sleeping or packing.
The second, published in 2009, and “much more elaborate”, took into account the following factors:
- Weather
- Debt
- Monthly salary
- Time since Christmas
- Time where the New Year’s resolutions are dropped
- Low levels of motivation
- Feeling the need to do something
These equations have taken a lot of qualifiers, such as fallacy, or “fake new”, but the truth is that 15 years later there is still talk of blue Monday, which shows that the advertising campaign had its success.
In 2011, Arnall declared that his formula was not very useful, but invited to take blue Monday as a point of support to “look at our lives with perspective”.
