Reclaiming Weekends

At Least During the Summer

Photo by Hansjörg Keller on Unsplash

Hello and welcome to Mature Content, a newsletter about lifelong learning, where I provide tools, insights, and resources for personal growth and discovery. This is the monthly installment of Good Insights, where I offer an insight about something I’m learning at home, at work, or in life.

I spent a lovely few days last week. Friday night, I had a drink with a good friend at our favorite local wine bar. Saturday afternoon, I read The New Yorker and hung out with my husband. Saturday night, we went to a fancy dinner party in honor of friends who were celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary. Sunday afternoon I played board games with my friends. Sunday evening I watched Wimbledon.

By the time I got to dinner Sunday night, I commented to my husband that I’d had such a lovely time relaxing for two whole days.

He looked at me dryly and replied: “I think most people call that a weekend.”

Why I Struggle with Weekends

I’ve long struggled with not working on weekends. Some of this is simply a by-product of running my own business. But there’s also a fear of the abyss—of how to deal with the thoughts and fears that crop up when I don’t have 10,000 things to tick off my to-do list. Sundays are particularly bad, because vestiges of my childhood creep in to poison the day.

I feel guilty if I don’t do at least some work over the weekend. A therapist I saw 30 years ago once asked me why. At that point in my life, I worked an eight-hour plus day on Sundays every week. So he was really asking me why I couldn’t at least take Saturdays off.

“It’s not that I can’t take a Saturday off,” I told him. “It’s that when I do it, I feel like some people do when they’ve consumed an entire box of chocolates.” It was simpler to just to work and not deal with the guilt trip.

And don’t get me started on my issues with vacations.

The 24/6 Mindset

I have improved over time. Years ago, I made a conscious decision not to work on Saturdays. (I know! You Go Girl!) I decided to make Saturdays “me time.” That meant something different when I had little kids. These days, “me time”translates into a combination of reading, cooking, and hanging out with friends. Sometimes I’ll see a film or a play or visit a museum.

Years ago…I decided to make Saturdays “me time.” These days, “me time”translates into combination of reading, cooking, and hanging out with friends.

For the most part, I’ve stuck with that plan. And it’s made a huge difference in my life. I enjoy myself more. I sleep better. And I regain all of that energy I tell my students they need to husband in order to avoid burnout.

But I still usually work on Sundays. It’s rarely heavy-duty work that requires a lot of cognitive effort, unless I’m really up against a deadline. But Sunday afternoons is when I catch up on a variety of admin work, both personal and professional. I book travel…read up on a host of newsletters and articles for this Substack…make a couple of long-distance calls to the States.

I recently explained my Sundays to a close friend, and how it tends to be a “mop-up” day for me on a host of tasks I never get around to during the work week.

“Yeah, I just squeeze that all in during the week,” she told me, shrugging. “I relax on Sundays.”

Applying Seasonality to Weekends

One answer to the too much to do/not enough time conundrum would be to work four days a week and do all of my admin on the fifth. That way, I could really experience a full, two-day weekend on a regular basis.

Before launching my business, I once met with a successful consultant who, like me, ran workshops for a living. She told me that while she used to deliver workshops five days a week, she now set aside Fridays for billing and admin.

Although her schedule made perfect sense to me, the idea of a four-day work week still feels too scary. Even if I could afford it, I don’t think I’d be able to commit to it, at least yet. I’m still too addicted to work.

That said, this week’s realization is that maybe I can have weekends in the summer. Largely because I work so much at universities, my work slows down considerably every summer. Even my corporate clients tend to take lengthy holidays.

In his wonderful book, Deep Work, Newport talks about the concept of seasonality. Pointing to himself and other academics, he talks about how many productive people write during seasons, rather than every day. So maybe I could take Newport’s idea of seasonality and apply it to weekends. Every July and August, I would take both weekend days off, instead of one. And see what happens…

I know that sounds ridiculous. I’m literally giving myself permission to do something many of my acquaintances do EVERY WEEK! But you’ve got to start somewhere. I’m inching towards my ideal workweek.

See you at the neighborhood walking tour on Sunday!

How about you? How do you think about and execute your weekends? Do you think seasonality might help you enjoy them more? If you have any tips, do share them in the comments section. I’m keen to learn and improve my relationship to work.