The saddest day of the year is today

Blue monday It is a concept that is already 13 years old, and for many it is more popularly known as the saddest day of the year.

But if you are one of those who for the first time discovers that at some point it was ruled that such a day exists, and in the same way ask yourself How to conclude that January 15 is the saddest day of the year 2018... well, stop guessing, we'll tell you.

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The saddest day of the year is today

The first time the term began to be used Blue monday It was in 2005, when the psychologist Cliff Arnall, a professor at Cardiff University, developed a mathematical formula in which he considered a series of factors that, according to his assessment, could affect the mood of people in general, and with which he tried to discover when the saddest day of the year took place.

This formula contained a series of variables among which he contemplated the weather, the income of the payroll for the month of January, the motivation towards the fulfillment of the New Year's resolutions, the money spent during Christmas and the time that has passed since these holidays, among others.

The conclusion reached by the researcher after observing the results obtained, based on the values ​​assigned to the variables, was that the third Monday of January was the saddest day of the year.

Obviously, such a resounding statement provoked all kinds of reactions, even more so when it was learned that said study was commissioned by Sky Travel, a travel agency, in order to analyze customer behavior trends when traveling.

Various reactions

Without going further, Cardiff University itself was one of the first to distance itself from Arnall with the sole argument that at that time he was no longer working with them. All a most empirical reasoning, yes sir.

On the other hand, among the detractors of the idea are all those who are willing to sharpen any news, calling it pseudoscience those data that they do not even understand by approximation (among them some will have had their statistics suspended in their student days).

However, there are also people with sufficient discerning ability to simply see a more likely data and portray that, generically in Western cultures, there may be more tendency to pessimism and low mood when the payroll for December and January has been melted during Christmas, when after signing up for a gym they do not go to and verifying that they do not manage to follow the diet to remove the lorzas from the nougat.

Is the Blue Monday formula valid?

Actually it could well be said that the famous formula of the Blue monday has the same ability to hit the saddest day of the year as another study of the gazillions there are to quantify something as subjective as a person's level of happiness or how nice your neighbor is depending on the apartment he lives in.

In short and drawing conclusions, remember that if on January 15 you find yourself more taciturn than necessaryPerhaps it is because the statistics that mark it as the saddest day of the year are not wrong.

In this case, and just in case, it would not be bad for you to check how the fulfillment of your New Year's resolutions is going and, if you are into extreme sports, take a look at your bank account to see how you have managed during the last month.