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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.
The typical Slashdot reader spends his weekend in his parents basement watching tentacle hentai and touching himself relentlessly. The only breaks are for sleep, using the bathroom, and calling up to his mother for more Cheetos. How does this fit into the two categories described in the article? Discuss.
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.
Robert Stebbins works as a sociologist so I can understand his need to pursue valuable activities over the weekend, because he's sure as hell not doing anything of value during the week. However, for people with careers that allow them to do valuable, challenging work in the week, I think it's better to have a relax on the weekend.
"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
My goal in life is to BE a passive hedonist, you insensitive clod!
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"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,"
That, or you have kids.
Instead, the weekend goal should be "eudaimonic" happiness
No, the goal should be to buy condoms and build a time machine.
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More hard, goal-driven work even on the weekend! That's what we need!
No. For a person who's already got a somewhat strenuous full-time job, I'd say that would be the best method to accelerate becoming burnt out. (And I've met burnout cases who'd fit that pattern, with therapists rather suggesting to subscribe to less strenuous, goal-directed activities at the weekends, too...)
walking with smartphone in front of the nose, in subways, even school ... barely noticing other humans around and not making many friends and real life social interactions anymore, ...
In other words: internet / social media addicted.
imagine how much time for useful stuff people would have, if they put their "smart"phone aside! :-/
My favorite part of weekends would be where I can do whatever the fuck I want, whenever the fuck I want to without worrying about a deadline. Telling people that they're spending their time in measurably non-optimal efforts is not the way to win friends and influence people.
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.
Spend a week working. Then spend a weekend working as well. Rinse and repeat. Several years of this and you are seriously start to considering putting a gun in your mouth and pulling the trigger, just to escape the cursed treadmill.
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.
This means spending the weekend on serious leisure activities that require the regular refinement of skills: your barbershop-quartet singing, ... You pursue serious leisure with the earnest tenor of a professional, even if the pursuit is amateur.
and even if you're an earnest tenor.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
...like those in the trades, probably best rejuvenate and relax best by working their minds. Those who work with their minds, probably best rejuvenate and relax by being more active.
I heard that somewhere, but can't give proper attribution.
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
"Eudaimonic" in general English means "conducive to happiness" because "eudaimonia" is a Greek word that most closely translates into English as "happiness", but in classical Greek philosophy "eudaimonia" means a specific kind of happiness. (Similar to how there are a bunch of different words for love: eros, agape, philos, etc). TFA is saying that that kind of happiness is what one should pursue, as opposed to a different kind of happiness.
Specifically, eudaimonia, which literally translated to something more like "good spirits", means something like "a life well lived", a life of achievement and intellectual self-satisfaction; as opposed to something like hedonia, which is just physiological pleasure.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
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For every one person working their ass off, two to three people can play games, smoke weed and have babies.
I think you nailed the problem: indeed, there should be nobody having to work their ass off. The work needed for sustaining human lives needs to be done mostly by machines. People will only work their ass off if that's what they really want, and not because the alternative is die of hunger.
Theoretically, this can work; getting there however would be difficult. Existing structures and ideologies will resist changes. It may sound difficult to believe, but I even think some folks will insist people should waste their lives in the drudgery of pointless boring "work", as if this is somehow morally better than letting them chose to live their lives as they want to (like, for example, playing games).