“Weekends don’t count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless” – Bill Watterson
I was interviewed for a personal profile piece in a legal recruiter’s newsletter a few years back. When asked what I did in my spare time, like on weekends, I replied, trying to sound a bit witty, that I religiously pursued the achievement of guilt-free, unproductive downtime. The answer was itself sincere. When it came to weekends, productivity is overrated, I thought. Producing had left me exhausted, thank you very much.
Katrina Onstad wrote in The Guardian: “the weekends reveal us as we really are”. That’s a disconcerting thought as I sit here, on the weekend, in my jogging bottoms (completely absent any intention to jog), tapping out this post on my laptop. So, the mirage of the weekday, be-suited, forthright, corporate manager has vanished as the curtain slowly lifts to reveal a dowdy, couch-cogitator, musing amongst the rest of the internet noise? Maybe. I would prefer to call myself a sartorially-passive weekend cyber-philosopher.
I used to feel that I needed to achieve something on the weekend. Something needed to come of it; otherwise I was wantonly wasting the opportunity gifted to me: an unpardonable act of time treason.
But I forgave myself for this treachery (it wasn’t hard to). After all, I spend the whole work-week in a relentless state of goal/mission/task–orientation. Measuring, benchmarking, targeting. Can I be blamed for wanting to inhabit the weekend out of reach of the yardstick that has been prodding me for the previous five days?
I never got trapped in the extra-curricular schoolchild-chauffeuring weekend gig, thank heavens. Weekend over-scheduling, or just scheduling, also became a no-no: the Outlook calendar is for the office. My weekends eventually escaped the joyless clutches of micro-management, efficiency and productivity.
But vegetating is hardly the most joyful of pursuits, so I’m not quite ready to claim that I have nailed weekend nirvana. I’m all too aware that what I’m reaching for is the anaesthetic of downtime. I am simply recovering from the week past and taking a breath before the next one arrives, all too soon. Whilst I no longer feel guilty about this, I do still sense a half-wasted chance.
What is needed is a distraction that properly distracts – something to get lost in. This is not watching semi-educational videos on YouTube (like people hitting each other by accident or falling over), or visiting a mall to see if there’s something you need to buy (because, at home you don’t remember what it is, but you’re sure that browsing around the shops will identify it for you and remind you of its critical importance to your wellbeing).
Getting lost in something is engaging in an activity that ushers one into the much-vaunted state of “flow”: where you become absorbed in something you enjoy, that engages your intellect and skill on some level, so that you get stuck in and lose track of time. The other ingredient is that you need to be creating rather than just consuming.
I kid you not, whilst typing out the last couple of paragraphs, one of my sons approaches me and observes, with a grin: “I can always tell when you’re writing your blog”.
“How so?” I ask, genuinely.
“Because you’re in the mooood” he grins, with cow-impersonating emphasis.
I enquire further, tickled by a frisson of anticipation of how “meta” the process of writing this post is about to become.
Apparently my “mood” is characterized by me not being distracted, not looking around while typing, just reaching for my mug of tea now and again to sip, eyes still attached to the screen. My “mood” also has the less dignified identifier of the tip of my tongue occasionally protruding from my lips (like a tortoise head peeking out from its shell). This signal of focus and concentration has, I recall, also been witnessed in the past when I am lining up a shot on the pool table.
So, this weekend, I have found my state of flow by writing about it. A triumph. Who needs banal errands and tasks, however well-intentioned?
Then a Gmail alert pings – it’s a reminder about my self-assessment tax return that needs to be prepared. Of course, a ban on weekend productivity does have its limits. That tax return needs attention. Yes, definitely. It does. Next weekend.