D1NT

Mondays are tough, no doubt about it. But they might be easier to take if we became nice-oholics.

Mondays.

The very word evokes feelings of dread in your average American worker and with good reason. Monday is the first day of the workweek for most people, the day most of us are back on the clock on someone else’s time, the day when that project you left so joyfully on Friday is waiting on your desk, the day the weekend becomes a memory and the reality bus hits you head-on.

Do a Web search on Mondays and you’ll get all kinds of laments — stuff like, “Monday: The Day That Sunday Threw Up.”

It’s not just that Mondays can be depressing, although there’s certainly evidence for that. Witness the number of downer songs written about Mondays (“Monday, Monday” by the Mamas and the Papas, “Rainy Days and Mondays” by the Carpenters, and, for all you ’80s junkies “Blue Monday” by New Order, just to name a few).

The truth is that Mondays can also be dangerous. A study from Finland, for example, shows...