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Weekend existentialism
Why we should spend more of our weekends doing less
The work week flies by. Between commuting, working, exercising, having dinner, and preparing for the next day, we have little time to stop and think. Before we know it, the work week is over.
The weekend is different. We leave work on Friday or wake up on Saturday with the disconcerting luxury of deciding how to spend the next 48 hours — though perhaps more so for those of us without obligations to partners or children.
The weekend is full of freedom, pregnant with possibility, chockfull of choices, and overflowing with options.
We try making some of these decisions ahead of time, taking time during our work week to make plans with friends, scour lists of weekend events around town, and write to-do lists of chores that we will definitely get around to this weekend.
But these scheduling efforts don’t always manage to fill our weekend hours. Sometimes, and by chance, a weekend is left largely open. And these unscheduled hours, whether we think about it or not, present us with thorny questions: What do we want to do with ourselves for two days? How do we want to spend our limited weekend time? What are we trying to maximize on Saturday and Sunday: relaxation, relationships, productivity, something else?