A recent study of employees in Germany found that higher sleep quality during weekends was associated with slightly lower levels of exhaustion during the working week.

The study aimed to explore the role of sleep quality in mental reattachment to work after leisure days (aka that ‘Monday feeling’, where we have to mentally reconnect with work) and its links to exhaustion at work and work task performance. Researchers hypothesised that employees would report better reattachment to work on Mondays following weekends when they experienced higher-quality sleep.

By contrast, weekends with catch-up sleep (sleep that compensates for previous lack of sleep) or disrupted natural sleep times due to social obligations and activities (social sleep lag) would be followed by lower levels of reattachment to work on Monday. Further, employees with higher-than-usual reattachment on Monday would experience lower levels of exhaustion and higher task performance during the working week.

Better weekend sleep leads to less exhaustion during the working week, according to new research