What do your weekends usually look like? Are you running from activity to activity? Are you checking things off your to-do list, doing homework or working? Do you take time to rest, relax and spend time with your family and friends?
Are you happy with how your weekends usually go, or do you wish they were different?
What would the perfect weekend look like to you?
In “Satisfying vs. Productive,” a November edition of The Morning newsletter, Melissa Kirsch asks us to think about these questions and more:
What constitutes a satisfying weekend day? Is it one in which you run all the errands and finish all the tasks that accumulated in the course of the week that was? Or is it a day devoted to recreation, a clearly demarcated zone of you time: sleep in, lingering coffee hour, maybe a family outing, dinner with friends? Does it include some delicate balance of decompression and preparation that you only know when you achieve it?
I used the word “satisfying” above, but I originally had “productive.” A productive day implies a day in which you got some things done, a certain degree of industry. Whereas a satisfying day might be one in which you didn’t necessarily do very much at all, but the contents of the day seem totally appropriate given any number of factors: the weather, the mood and mind-set of the participants, the complexion of the days leading up to it, the forecasted events of the days to come. It can be hard sometimes, for those of us who are perpetually running over a mental list of things to do, things undone, to accept a day in which no boxes got checked off to qualify as productive.
That list. An eternal scroll where any completed task is immediately replaced by another to be done, a constantly computing ledger that always runs a deficit. I’ve been trying to ignore the master mental to-do list, to see it for what it is: It’s really a secret record of failure, disguised as a high achiever’s rigorous planning tool, kept by someone (me!) who’s not overly invested in my success. An impressive lifelong project, maybe, but what about it is satisfying, what about it is creative or joyful or helping anyone or anything? It gives one an illusion of control, as in the Mary Oliver poem “I Worried”: “I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers / flow in the right direction, will the earth turn / as it was taught, and if not how shall / I correct it?”
Instead, Ms. Kirsch suggests thinking about your days this way:
What would constitute a satisfying day today? I think just asking the question sets one up for success. We spend a lot of time ruing the things we didn’t get done after the fact, but maybe more intention is what’s in order. How do you want to feel come bedtime? What things do you need to do, what plans do you need to make or break, in order to get there?
Students, read the entire article and then tell us:
What would your ideal weekend look like? What would you do (or not do)? Where would you go? Whom would you spend it with?
What do you think about Ms. Kirsch’s distinction between a weekend that is “productive” and one that is “satisfying”? Which do you prefer? Why?
Are you someone who has a never-ending to-do list? How does it make you feel? Does this essay make you think about how you could approach your list differently?
Maybe it’s not possible to have an ideal weekend every weekend, but if you don’t find your weekends particularly satisfying right now, what advice could you take from Ms. Kirsch’s essay to make them better?
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.