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'You're Doing Your Weekend Wrong' (qz.com)
"If you don't feel rejuvenated and keen to face Monday after two work-free days, there might be a reason: You're doing your weekend wrong," an anonymous reader writes, citing a Quartz article. From the article: According to University of Calgary sociologist Robert Stebbins, most leisure falls into two categories: casual and serious. Casual leisure pursuits are short lived, immediately gratifying, and often passive; they include activities like drinking, online shopping, and binge-watching. These diversions provide instant hedonic pleasure -- quite literally, actually, as all these pastimes cause the brain to release dopamine and provide instant soothing comfort. In a culture where many people exist all week in an amped-up, overworked state, casual weekend leisure easily becomes the default for quick decompression.
But serious leisure is a far more beneficial pursuit. Serious leisure activities provide deeper fulfillment, and -- to invoke a fuzzy '70s word -- "self-actualization." Self-actualization is the pinnacle of human development, according to humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow, who describes it as "the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming." In other words, getting self-actualized is the whole point of life, and passive, hedonistic leisure (fun and occasionally necessary as it might be) won't get you there. Instead, the weekend goal should be "eudaimonic" happiness, which is a sense of well-being that arises from meaningful, challenging activities that cause you to grow as a person. This means spending the weekend on serious leisure activities that require the regular refinement of skills: your barbershop-quartet singing, your stamp collecting, or slightly less dorky, but still equally in-depth, projects. You pursue serious leisure with the earnest tenor of a professional, even if the pursuit is amateur.
But serious leisure is a far more beneficial pursuit. Serious leisure activities provide deeper fulfillment, and -- to invoke a fuzzy '70s word -- "self-actualization." Self-actualization is the pinnacle of human development, according to humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow, who describes it as "the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming." In other words, getting self-actualized is the whole point of life, and passive, hedonistic leisure (fun and occasionally necessary as it might be) won't get you there. Instead, the weekend goal should be "eudaimonic" happiness, which is a sense of well-being that arises from meaningful, challenging activities that cause you to grow as a person. This means spending the weekend on serious leisure activities that require the regular refinement of skills: your barbershop-quartet singing, your stamp collecting, or slightly less dorky, but still equally in-depth, projects. You pursue serious leisure with the earnest tenor of a professional, even if the pursuit is amateur.
It could also be that you're doing your week wrong, and you have no energy left to do anything sensible in your spare time. Are you working to live, or living to work?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
"If you don't feel rejuvenated and keen to face Monday after two work-free days, there might be a reason: You're doing your weekend wrong,"
But it's far more likely that if you feel tired when returning to work, it is because you spent the whole weekend partying.
And if not burning the candle at both ends, then chasing around after your children: taxiing them all over the place, shopping, cleaning, tidying, doing laundry, home maintenance, cooking and walking the dog.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Serious leisure activities provide deeper fulfillment, and -- to invoke a fuzzy '70s word -- "self-actualization."
If I had time and money to get serious about leisure activities, I wouldn't be working. If I wasn't working, I'd have time to get serious about leisure activities, but I wouldn't have the money. If I earned the money I needed to build the facilities I'd need to go all professional at my leisure activities, I wouldn't have the time.
I don't feel lesser because I'm not going professional with my leisure. If I did, it would be a job, and it wouldn't be a fun distraction any more.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Towards the end of his life, Churchill wrote a little book called "Painting as a Pastime", which is all about his favorite hobby of painting. In the introductory remarks he makes the same point as the author of this article, but in a somewhat more charming and less pretentious manner. I would also point out that he didn't require a doctorate in sociology in order to arrive at this insight.
Doing it wrong they say. How about this.
MY weekends are at least partially spent doing all the household / homeowner chores and tasks I don't have time to do during the week after I get home from work.
Clean house. Aquarium maintenance, other pet maintenance. Yard related stuff. Grocery store run. Laundry. Any and all errands I need to do during the hours when I'm off and the business I need to interact with is open.
Sometimes I dread Saturday almost as much as Monday.
Even when I was single my weekends weren't entirely work-free. In the past 20 years, my earning power has steadily waned, so evenings/weekends have been packed with side hustles and chores, with a little leisure if I was lucky.
and then has Saturday and Sunday off
That, or you have kids.
Definitely, this.
Weekends are a completely different thing with small children. From birth until early teens, you can likely expect to lose a lot of weekend time to activities related to childcare (playing with them, cleaning up after them, ferrying them to various activities, etc.). Combine that with basic stuff you HAVE to do -- like cleaning up the house in general, home maintenance, etc. -- and weekends are often gone.
Well, unless you want to be that dad who spends every weekend in his study with his stamp collection or building a ship in a bottle and yelling at his little kids to "go away" when they bother him. And you'll need a cooperative spouse (or hire a nanny).
Sure, you can incorporate kids (even little kids once they're at least toddlers) in a lot of weekend maintenance and such, but be prepared for everything to take twice as long. Once they get older, you can often incorporate them into a hobby like woodworking or some other craft activity, but that may or may not be as satisfying as devoting your own time to honing your own skills.
It's great and all to talk about "self actualization" on the weekends, and I did a lot of that in my spare time on the weekends in my 20s. Then "life happened." Once kids hit their teens, you may be able to reclaim more time for your weekend leisure. But a lot of people spend many years of their adult lives with lots of weekend responsibilities they can't get out of. You can't really blame them for taking the few hours of "downtime" they end up with and sitting in front of the TV or whatever.