What Sunday Nights Have Been Telling Me

Sunday nights have started to feel strangely consistent for me. Even when I’m on vacation, even when there’s nothing urgent waiting the next day, my body still reacts as if Monday is something I need to brace for. That reaction shows up before I’ve had time to think about it, which is how I know it isn’t about motivation or discipline. It’s something deeper.

Last week I wrote about working from hotels. Some people read it as a productivity experiment or a lifestyle flex. That wasn’t what I was trying to say.

This week I’m on vacation. It’s Sunday. And despite having no reason to prepare for anything, my nervous system is still on alert. That’s been hard to ignore. It tells me this isn’t about effort. It’s about capacity.

I don’t struggle because I don’t care enough. I struggle because I care about too many things at the same time.

Experience has a side effect people don’t talk about much. The longer you do this work, the more you see. You notice where systems are fragile, where decisions will cause pain later, and where shortcuts quietly accumulate interest. You don’t look for these problems. You just see them.

And once you see them, it’s hard to unsee them.

So your mind does what it’s trained to do. It starts working. In the shower. On walks. Late at night. Not because anyone asked you to, but because leaving problems unresolved creates its own kind of pressure.

The issue isn’t thinking. It’s that there’s rarely enough bandwidth to actually close all the loops you’re holding. The thinking accumulates, but the resolution doesn’t. That’s where the tension lives.

At home, I’ve noticed the same pattern. Install a fan. Hook up a dishwasher. Cut the countertop for a new stovetop. Paint the living area. None of these things are unreasonable by themselves. Together, they recreate the same feeling I have at work: too much ownership, too many open ends, no clear stopping point.

That’s why hotels keep coming to mind.

Not because I want to escape responsibility, but because hotels remove it. Nothing is half-done. Nothing needs fixing. The space doesn’t quietly ask anything of you. There’s a beginning and an end to the stay, and those boundaries are real.

My nervous system understands that immediately.

What surprised me is that the appeal isn’t about working more. It’s about being more present. With my wife. With my thoughts. With myself, without constantly scanning for the next thing that needs attention.

When people talk about luxury, they often mean excess. What I’m starting to value is the opposite. Fewer simultaneous obligations. Clear edges around time and responsibility. Environments that reduce cognitive load instead of adding to it.

For developers earlier in their careers, this might show up as constant exhaustion or Sunday-night anxiety without a clear reason. For senior engineers, it often looks like carrying architectural responsibility far beyond what’s written in a job description. And for CTOs and leaders, it’s easy to underestimate how much unspoken ownership your strongest people are absorbing every day.

Most of this pressure never shows up in a sprint board or a status update.

Booking a hotel wouldn’t be about proving I can work anywhere. It would be about practicing a different relationship with work and life. One where rest isn’t something you earn only after everything is done, but something that makes better decisions possible in the first place.

I don’t have a tidy conclusion here. I’m not quitting anything, and I’m not offering a framework. I’m just listening more closely to what Sunday nights have been telling me for a while now.

Lately, this has made me think less about individual tasks and more about systems — not just the ones I help build for work, but the ones I build around my own life. How work is framed. Where thinking happens. What gets captured and what gets carried. I’m starting to believe that most burnout isn’t caused by too much work, but by too many unresolved decisions living rent-free in your head.

If there’s anything to take from this, it’s not “go book a hotel.” It’s noticing the patterns your body keeps repeating and asking why. Those signals aren’t indulgent. They’re data. And they’re often pointing somewhere worth paying attention to.