A proposition: the Anti-Weekend.
Instead of one or two (or when extremely fortuitous, three. Like a mystical blue moon) days of no-work weekend, how about one to three days of work and nothing for the rest of the week?
Same amount of work. We only get rid of the following:
- The entitlement to time that isn’t one’s own;
- The belief that time = energy/productivity/quality; and
- That thing that C. Northcote Parkinson talked about.
More often than not, if we’re to be really honest with ourselves (and if necessary, others too), the problem isn’t that there are too many things to do but that the things to do take up way too much time. Way more than necessary.
And okay, maybe there are also, in most cases, way too may things to do. But I think having only one or a few days of ‘work’ could solve that too. What are essential? What are things we put on the calendar only to fill it [and make ourselves feel that we’re doing the best that we could]?
Postscript, what an Anti-Weekend schedule comes with: more time to contemplate failure and the emptiness of being.
But do trust me on this: those two things aren’t so bad. At least not in the long run.