Plan your weekends well

Wasted weekends are a luxury only for those who think that they have enough time, writes Pavan Soni

In factories, there’s something called a setup time. It’s the downtime between two shifts, or when one kind of product gives way to another. The tools are changed, the jigs and fixtures are replaced, the components are brought in, and the new shift appears.

The same fate befalls employees exhausted after five days of working, jostling through the traffic, eating at the airports and sharpening their multi-tasking skills. Saturday and Sunday provide the much-needed respite for another week’s ordeal. The two days are a riot—shopping, eating out, driving, meeting, sleeping, drinking, and what have you –knowing that it won’t turn up for another five days.

Many think of it as their moral responsibility to contribute to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) as they hit the malls, checking out the latest fashions and flicks, and then some more. But could there be a better way? Can the weekends be designed as a source of fresh thinking and temperaments rather than as a sink for anxiety and frustration? Could a weekend be more than a revenge for the week ahead? It can be, and rather, should be, for nothing is beyond design. 

For most of our lives, we have been ‘told’ how to lead a day. First, by the parents, then the school timetable, then lectures at the colleges and universities, and eventually the eight hours of work. It’s a different matter, though, that both eight hours of sleep and eight hours of work have become an exception. Even the eight hours ought to be nearly scheduled around streams of 30-minute meetings, with the time’s owner struggling to secure a decent meal.

The script doesn’t leave much to chance, ever optimising and eager to squeeze the last trace of energy, leaving a wasted self to be recharged over the weekend. As if a day wasn’t sufficient to recover from the damage, we have two, and many are rooting for three-day weekends. Of what I am proposing here, a three-day weekend can be a blessing for a few, but a curse for many, as they might be forced to face the futility of the whole enterprise. 

Your employer designs your weekdays. Whether you’re a government servant or an employee at an MNC or anything in between, you are what your job makes of you. Starting with working, then managing those working and then looking after those who manage those who work—it’s an incessant stream of consciousness, except that after a point it ceases to be much of a consciousness.

It rather becomes routine, banal, mostly stripped of creative upsides and adventurous downsides. That makes the weekends even more special, a respite from the tyranny of thoughtlessness, a fresh air of autonomy, and some freewheeling. But can weekends offer more? Can they be a wellspring of new ideas, new hobbies, new dimensions, and a new you? Here’s an invocation to plan your weekends well. 

The first step towards owning your weekends is to plan them. A good starting point is picking up hobby classes. You are never too old, and it’s never futile to pick up new skills. These could be music, art, theatres, or anything that would excite your child. You certainly don’t expect your child to make a profession out of every hobby class of hers, so why that expectation from yourself? Why can’t you take a hobby and not convert it into something of utility?

A hobby does three things to you. It brings fresh perspectives to life through new knowledge and people. It helps you develop mastery, which in turn gives you self-confidence, and not least, it offers a meaningful escape from the treadmill, called a job.

Once you have a hobby class, say for two hours a day, your Saturday or Sunday is then anchored around it. You wake up on time, finish your chores, perform the physical and mental sanity checks, and then get into a different realm of life. Not long after, you will develop the urge to be better at it, and who knows, it may open a new vista for you in being a different being. After all, your career was not exactly an outcome of some cosmic alignment. 

Another useful avenue for the weekend is to read and write. It better be orthogonal to your day job, or else you are doing just more of the same. It could be an outlet for your deeply hidden and carefully nurtured longings. Those things that you have planned for after retirement, because who knows, you may not even see your retirement.

So, your weekend is a semi-retirement. You can live a retired life for the two days. No one in their right mind dreams of hitting the malls post-retirement or going about café hopping. When you realise that the bulk of your life is behind you, you become more sincere. Wasted weekends, or let’s call them mere days, are a luxury only for those who think that they have enough time. 

So, take your time and design it well. The weekday-weekend division is only for convenience. You don’t have to do more of the same, but instead do different, preferably things that are done more consciously and that have a lasting, positive impact on your life. Start with a hobby class.
(The author teaches at IIMB)