Why Last Monday Could Have Been The Worst Day Of Your Year

Remember that urban myth about Blue Monday? Well it came around again this week. Mondays are bad enough without being named 'the worst day of the year', so for many of us it was probably a pretty grim day.

So here's the 'formula' that was used to prove the significance of Blue Monday:

[W + (D-d)] x T^Q

M x Na

It's not quite as ground breaking as maybe Pythagoras' rule, but it's worth having a look at what factors are involved in causing extreme unhappiness:

Weather

Firstly you have the weather (W) - a standard nuance in Britain. But if we're going by degrees centigrade, then what about snow? People love that stuff. But rain, not so much. Unless you're recreating that scene from The Notebook - that might be a bit nice?

Debt

Next we add weather to [debt (D) minus monthly salary (d)] which is never fun to do. It does make sense because it's not quite payday, but it's still post-Christmas/NYE/January sales. It's a surprise that anyone can afford kale right now, let alone happiness.

Christmas is over

Now we've got a lovely addition of weather plus (a lack of) money, let's go ahead and times it by time since Christmas (T). Ok, that's fine and easily quantifiable - on Monday 19th January it was 25 days since JC's big birthday throwdown. But hey, you can't be sad because it's only a few weeks until Valentine's Day (sigh).

Regret

The next step is to work out time since Christmas to the power of Q - time since breaking your new year's resolution. If you haven't broken it yet (or didn't set yourself one) then surely T^Q would equal 1, making the post-Crimbo blues irrelevant to your happiness. Can you also feel this formula falling apart?

Lack of motivation

Well, there's probably a (let's face it, random) number on our top line now, so why not divide this by [motivational levels (M) multiplied by the feeling of need to take action (Na)]. Right... In terms of what your individual total means, let's just assume it's bad. We're not really sure of any scale or units of measurement, but this does sound like a solid chunk of maths. Maybe some other mathematical factors for this equation could include:

• Number of dates lined up for Valentine's Day.
• Days until your next holiday.
• Amount of fluff in your wallet/purse.
• Your weight minus that of your cat's.

So if you're not feeling depressed (or confused) after all that maths, then well done, you've beaten Blue Monday. It's nice to know that someone can be bothered to formulate the recipe for misery, in a similar way to someone designing the perfect way to make faecal pie. Realistically, we might as well be asking: 'what do you get if you combine a slice of ham (H) with a brick (B), divide by metres above sea level (M) to the power of cous cous (CC)?' Answers on a postcard.