That Sunday Night Dread

You know the feeling. Sunday evening, somewhere around 6 PM, that weight settles into your chest. Not anxiety exactly... more like resignation. The weekend's over and you're already bracing for Monday.

Most people brush it off. "Everyone hates Mondays." "That's just how work is." "I should be grateful to have a job."

I told myself those things for years. And I was wrong about every one of them.

It's Not Laziness. It's Data.

That Sunday night dread isn't a character flaw. It's your gut telling you something's misaligned. And your gut is processing a lot more information than your conscious mind gives it credit for.

I spent years chasing what I thought were the right career moves. Promotions, titles, comp increases. Every box checked. Every metric hit. I was doing everything the career playbook said I should do.

Still felt hollow.

So I did what any engineer would do... I optimized harder. More goals. More habits. More productivity systems. If the current approach wasn't working, surely the answer was to do more of it, faster.

It wasn't.

You Can't Optimize Your Way Out of a Values Conflict

Here's what I eventually learned: the problem wasn't my strategy. It was my starting point.

I'd never asked the fundamental question: What do I actually value?

Not what I should value. Not what looks good on a performance review. Not what my manager or my peers or LinkedIn tells me is important. What do I value?

When I finally did that work... really sat with it, not as a quick exercise but as a genuine exploration... decisions got dramatically simpler:

• This opportunity aligns with my values. Yes.
• This one doesn't. No.
• This one conflicts. Worth investigating why.

The Sunday dread didn't disappear overnight. But the clarity did something powerful: it gave me a framework for understanding why certain things felt wrong. And once you understand the why, you can actually do something about it.

The Values Trap

Here's the tricky part: values conflicts aren't always obvious. Sometimes the role is genuinely good. The team is great. The work is interesting. But there's a subtle misalignment that erodes your energy over time.

Maybe you value autonomy but your org requires six approvals for every decision. Maybe you value depth but your role demands constant context-switching. Maybe you value impact but your work feels three layers removed from the outcome.

None of these are dealbreakers on their own. But stack enough small misalignments together and you get that Sunday night weight.

Career Clarity Starts with Values Clarity

I'm building MomentumEQ because I wish this framework had existed when I was in the thick of it. Not another productivity tool. Not another goal-setting app. A system that starts where career development actually starts... with understanding what matters to you and building from there.

If you're feeling that Sunday dread, don't ignore it. Don't optimize harder. Start by asking the question most people never ask: What do I actually value? The answer might surprise you.