When is your weekend?

The Traveling Introvert

I want to talk about recharge time and weekends. So I was recently working with a group during one of our online coworking sessions and the statement came up that weekends our social construct. And so why do weekends matter? Unlike sort of, you know, the 24 hour daily rotation of the Earth was a yearlong journey around the sun. The seven day week specifically is purely a social construct. The two day weekend was, in part, born from another economic crisis.

So during the Great Depression in the 1930s, many industries that had not yet adopted the 40 hour work week cut in place schedules back from seven days to five days a week so that fewer working hours could be distributed among more people. And so this led to the weekend, these two days off that where people did not go to their regular jobs. However, speaking to a lot of people recently, I asked them what days do they take off? Because we happened to be working on a Saturday.

And the overwhelming response was they did not take time off.

They did not take one specific day off or two days off or even three days off in a week to recharge. They mentioned that they recharge by sleeping and also just by taking a little time every day to recharge rather than keeping two days at the end in the middle of wherever of the week to get that energy back. And so having a weekend wasn't really a thing for them, and this led to further conversation about weekends and why they're helpful, why they're not helpful.

And right now, because there is such a blur between home life and work life and because people just don't see the blurred lines and the differences, that they don't tend to take weekends and they don't seem to see how that could have health effects later on down the line. Now, there is a couple of people who were wed the weekend day, and so they have Wednesday off and Saturday off, a Wednesday off and Sunday off. And so they split up their weekend.

Some people have a three day weekend. So they have they work for days on three days or four days on three days off to recharge. I do think that recharge time is very personal and maybe having two days off at the end of the week doesn't work for you. It is your weekend doesn't have to be the weekend. And if it is not, if you do not take two days at the weekend, what do you call those days off that you take to call the midweek weekends?

Do you call them Wednesdays? Like, what do you do? But humans are a creature of habit. So having a schedule when we work and when we don't work is hugely important. It doesn't matter what that schedule is, it's just that the schedule needs to exist. So try and figure out when you can do things that are creative, things that are fun. It doesn't matter what is in your routine, just the fact that you do have a routine, because that's how we work well as humans.

So it doesn't matter if your weekends, all your weekends or you may recall your weekends or you take your only work four hours a day, whatever it is, figure out what works for you and use that to your advantage. How you recharge and what you're doing during those recharge is really important, but also having something to look forward to. One of the challenges people are currently facing is that every day kind of melds into another. If you ask them what they did last Tuesday, about Tuesday, when was Tuesday, what was Tuesday.

So having these little pockets of time where you do things that are creative and then you recharge and you have something to look forward to, really helps your brain remember what happened when. And so even if it's appointments or virtual dates or games or whatever, it might be just baking at home like one day on this particular day, like every Tuesday, I bake, for example, having something to look forward to and having that delineation helps you remember and define a time that's just kind of the way our minds work.

So I guess the question is, do weekends really matter? Yes, to a degree, but it doesn't have to be at the weekend. I'd love to know what you do to recharge and what times of the week you set aside to do recharging. Thank you for listening. This is [e-mail] helping you build your brand and get hired. Have a great rest of your week.