Ranking The Seven Days Of The Week From Worst To Best

When life is good, maybe you’re on vacation, or have a big event to look forward to, a week can often feel like it flies by. On the other hand, if you have a big work project or you’re nearing something you’ve been dreading, a week can often feel like a century.

But one thing we can all agree upon is that not all days of the week are created equal. Everyone has that one day of the week, at least, that no matter what they have going on, seems to the absolute worst. While others have a day they look forward to each week.

Oftentimes, there’s a shared societal understanding of the best and worst days of the week. But what exactly are those rankings, generally speaking?

Well, we think we have a pretty good idea.

Ranking The Days Of The Week

So for this exercise to work, we have to make some basic assumptions. For the purpose of the exercise, we’re talking to people who work five-day workweeks, Monday through Friday.

The great irony here is that the author of this piece is not one of those people. However, it is the most common situation and, for the sake the ranking, is the easiest reference point.

Additionally, we’re not counting holiday weeks where there’s a three-day weekend. Those are special circumstances and fall outside the norm.

So, without further ado, here are the days of the week, ranked:

7) Tuesday

Bet you didn’t see this one coming, huh?

Yes, Monday gets a bad rap, understandably. We can all thank Garfield for that to some degree, but also, who wants to go back to work after the weekend? Weirdoes.

But here’s the thing with Monday. You go in prepared for the work and, to some degree, refreshed.

Tuesdays have basically all the downsides of Monday. Nothing really notable happens on them, and the days seem to drag on forever. Taco Tuesday is just a plot by Big Tuesday (TM) to get you to think its day is better than it is. But that is simply untrue.

Tuesday is, without question, the worst day of the week,

6) Monday

Now, with that said, it’s not that Monday is exactly good.

I mean, the phrase Sunday Scaries exists for a reason. The dread of having to return to work is often so bad that it ruins the whole second half of people’s Sunday. That’s some serious firepower!

However, as we said above, you know what you’re walking into on Mondays. A lot of times you can ease into the workday, and there’s a shared understanding that nobody wants to be back at work. Misery does, in fact, love company, and there’s plenty of it to go around on a Monday.

And for those of us who are big sports fans, you at least get Monday Night Football to cap off a long day back at work.

5) Thursday

Here’s the thing about Thursday: Unless you’re in college and you have Thirsty Thursday deals at your college town bars, I’ve never met anyone who feels any type of way about Thursday.

It just sort of …. exists.

Sure, we get Thursday Night Football, but those games are normally terrible. There’s nothing exciting about a Thursday. However, you are four-fifths of the way through the week, the end is very much in sight, and you can begin to get truly excited about the weekend to come.

4) Wednesday

Ah yes, Hump Day.

The thing about Wednesday is that while the day itself is often fairly bland, similar to Thursday, it represents a turning point in the week. You have crested the mountain, and the rest of the week is downhill.

Getting to and through Wednesday feels like an accomplishment, and when you walk out of work after Wednesday, you feel as if you’ve accomplished something.

Add to that the fact that a lot of bars and restaurants seem to have a lot going on on Wednesdays, and it makes it the perfect middle ground not only for the work week, but also for our rankings.

3) Friday

Who doesn’t love a Friday?

Rebecca Black put it best: You do, in fact, gotta get down on Friday. (Somewhere, there are fans of The Cure who are furious that I did not reference them instead).

But Friday is the end of the misery that is the work week, and hope springs eternal. You can go out after work. Maybe have a few beverages, if you’re into that thing. Meet up with friends. Stay out late.

Fridays are wonderful. They represent life anew, if only for a short 48-hour-or-so span. They’re not quite equivalent to a full weekend day, but boy, they are sure close.

2) Sunday

Now, in the NFL-crazed world we live in, this might sound like sacrilege. But hear me out.

Sunday is, and will always be, the best sports day of the week. Not just because of the NFL. But you also get the end to golf tournaments, motorsports races, and plenty of other big events. I love a Sunday.

HOWEVER.

As we mentioned above, the Sunday Scaries are real, and they are dangerous. The later you get into your Sunday, the more aware you become that Monday is creeping right around the corner. You can’t stay out late. You can’t drink as much as you’d like (if you’re into that sort of thing). You have to start thinking about all the work you ignored on Thursday and Friday because, hey, next week exists.

I love a good Sunday. But it simply cannot top the list.

1) Saturday

Sunday cannot top the list, but Saturday must.

Saturdays are wonderful. You can do anything you want! If you’d like to sit around and watch college football all day? You can do that! (RIP Pac-12 after dark though).

Want to go on a bar crawl? No problem, you’ve got a whole day tomorrow to recover. Have a home project you’re working on? Dive right in, you’ve got the energy of the weekend right there in front of you.

There is no day of the week that quite represents endless exciting possibilities in the way that Saturday does. And on top of that, if you’re a sports fan, you often get an amuse-bouche of what’s to come in things like golf and racing.

You get all of this without having to worry about the next day, and while feeling unchained from the shackles of the last five days of work.

Saturday is love. Saturday is life. Long live Saturday.