Most weeks I’m already thinking about the weekend by Tuesday. Finally, two days that are supposedly mine, dangling enticingly at the end of the week like a promise. And then Sunday evening arrives and there’s a specific, familiar flatness to it, even when nothing actually went wrong.
For me the cause was almost always the same.
My Saturdays were just as full as my Tuesdays, just with better activities planned.
A full calendar doesn’t rest you any more on a weekend than it does during the week, even when everything on it is something you actually wanted to do.
The things listed below are simply ideas to fill genuinely open time, once you stop reaching for your phone instead.
Rearrange one room, just to see how it looks.
I’ve been doing this since I was a kid and finally had my own room. Once furniture has been in the same place for a year, it’s just begging to be moved on a whim with no real plan. Whether it improves the room or not, it’s genuinely absorbing in a way scrolling never is.
Say yes to whatever comes up.
A last-minute picnic because the weather turned out decent, or a walk someone else suggested an hour before it happened. The plans that weren’t on the calendar tend to be the ones that actually land.
Sit somewhere with nowhere to be for an hour.
You can bring something to read if it helps, but simply sitting in a coffee shop, the garden, or on a park bench means having no outcome attached to the hour at all.
Take a walk wherever feels right.
No route, for as long you feel like it, until you want to turn back. You can have music or a podcast on, but I love listening to the sounds around me, even if it’s just sirens and traffic.
Start something you don’t have to finish.
You don’t need to finish any of it by Sunday night. Think; a half-read book, a project that can sit out on the table for a week if it needs to. My go-to is a jigsaw (there are puzzle rolls to keep your puzzle safe from toddler hands or doggie paws when not in use).
Let the boredom happen before you reach for your phone.
The first twenty minutes of unscheduled time are usually uncomfortable. That’s normal, and it passes. What you actually want to do tends to show up on the other side of it.
None of these are obligations either. Leaving the time unscheduled is the main point, more than filling it with any particular thing on this list. Some weekends that’s a picnic. Some weekends it’s just a Saturday that didn’t really do anything, and that’s enough too.
