You're doing your weekend wrong

Just because you didn’t work last weekend doesn’t mean you had a good weekend.

If you don’t feel rejuvenated and keen to face Monday after two work-free days, you're doing your weekend wrong.

• Casual leisure: short-lived, immediately gratifying, and often passive; it includes activities like drinking, online shopping, and the aforementioned binge-watching.
• Serious leisure: meaningful, challenging activities that cause you to grow as a person.

In a live-to-work society, where your career is also your identity and status, the instinct for leisure atrophies. Paradoxically, then, getting a good weekend means working at leisure.

Socializing strengthens the immune system and boosts mental health, reducing depression. 

Passive, solo leisure activities like tending to social feeds and playing video games reinforce absence in lives already starved for presence. Digital networks are not the same as human networks, and they won’t provide the same benefits as a real community.

Hobbies have been proven to reduce stress and loneliness, and senior citizens with hobbies may be less susceptible to dementia.

Deep engagement in an activity unleashes the “flow” state, which arises from immersion and mastery so intense that time seems to drop away.

Search for some volunteer activities. Most volunteers have a clear sense of purpose and meaning.  

Studies found that spending time on others makes people feel highly effective and capable, which has the effect of expanding time. 

By definition, play is fluid and has no known outcome or necessary beginning and end. True play doesn’t try to tame time.

Expand your idea of play to include flirting, reading out loud to someone, daydreaming, and other purposeless and pleasurable moments.