The Art of Manliness - Take Back the Weekend

00:00:00.000 Hey, this is Brett. It is Labor Day here in the United States. We're taking a break to spend time

00:00:03.500 with our family, eat some hamburgers, celebrate the end of summer. So we're going to rebroadcast

00:00:07.220 episode number 753, Take Back the Weekend. Hope you enjoy it. Hope you're having a great Labor

00:00:11.980 Day. See you on Wednesday with a brand new episode. Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition

00:00:23.800 of the Art of Manliness podcast. Now, do you ever get to feeling kind of down, dejected,

00:00:28.000 and anxious come Sunday evening? People refer to this phenomenon as the Sunday night blues,

00:00:32.480 and it's a common experience. You may have chalked it up to ruin the fact that your fun and restful

00:00:36.760 weekend is over, and you have yet another work week ahead. But my guests would say that your

00:00:40.720 Sunday night sadness may also be rooted in the feeling of regret, the regret you didn't put

00:00:45.140 your weekend to good use, that it wasn't restful and fun, that it was instead busy, draining, and

00:00:50.120 once again, a big letdown. Her name is Katrina Onstad, and she's the author of The Weekend Effect. 0.99

00:00:55.140 Today, Katrina shares how the idea of the weekend, of having two back-to-back days off from work came 0.96

00:01:00.080 about, how it's been challenged and subsequently eroded in the modern day. We then talk about how

00:01:04.180 to take back your weekends, so that your invaluable Saturdays and Sundays feel more the way they did

00:01:08.620 when you were a kid, filled with a sense of possibility. After the show's over, check out our

00:01:12.900 show notes at aom.is slash weekend. All right, Katrina Onstad, welcome to the show.

00:01:30.800 Thanks for having me.

00:01:32.180 So you've got a book called The Weekend Effect, and this is all about the benefits of actually

00:01:37.340 enjoying those two days that we get for a weekend and how to make the most of them.

00:01:42.900 Curious, was there a moment in your own life, of life of weekends, where you realized, man,

00:01:48.640 my weekends, they're not great. I could probably do these better.

00:01:53.080 Well, it's funny now, post-COVID, right? Because, of course, The Weekend looked pretty different a few

00:02:00.100 years ago when I wrote this book. So I'll dig back into the moment where the before times.

00:02:07.220 And yeah, I was raising two kids, married, very busy work life, and we were packed. I think

00:02:17.220 our calendars were like the calendars of CEOs, even though that's not exactly what we did

00:02:23.340 professionally and certainly not what our kids were. But they were scheduled, we were scheduled.

00:02:27.340 And my son on a Sunday night would sort of turn to me every Sunday and say, so was that it? Was

00:02:33.020 that the weekend with this kind of disappointment as if we had withheld something from him? And it was

00:02:39.820 kind of clear that the pace wasn't changing, that there was nothing kind of in the texture and the

00:02:45.880 tone of the weekends that differentiated those two days from the other five days. And it was a problem.

00:02:51.620 And I was really worried about, you know, losing this time as a family and also about my own rate

00:02:56.480 of burnout, which was palpable. And, you know, a kind of sharpness and unhappiness was emerging that

00:03:01.540 I think often happens with people in our overwhelmed lives. And I wanted to really take a look at it.

00:03:06.880 So that was kind of the spark for the book.

00:03:09.360 Well, and that comment by your son, like, is that it? Was that the weekend? A lot of people

00:03:14.100 experience that. In fact, there's like a name for this phenomenon, the Sunday blues,

00:03:18.100 Sunday evening blues.

00:03:19.080 Yeah, it's actually something that, you know, there's been lots of surveys and research and

00:03:25.020 people will actually report a negative feeling on Sunday night, like a kind of upcoming panic and

00:03:33.080 about the week ahead and also a sense of regret that the weekend wasn't what they had hoped it would

00:03:39.900 be. And I think that that's kind of a universal feeling. Like we know that it's supposed to be

00:03:44.260 different. We know it's supposed to be set apart. And we remember probably, hopefully from our

00:03:48.420 childhoods, we were lucky enough to have those kinds of weekends where we were free and we were

00:03:52.860 kind of off the clock. And getting back to that feeling or being reminded of that feeling and not

00:03:58.540 having it on a Sunday night is something I think we all kind of grieve.

00:04:02.920 Yeah, I think so. I mean, yeah. I remember my weekends as a kid compared to as now as an adult.

00:04:08.960 Weekends, they often just feel like any other day, except the kids don't go to school.

00:04:13.420 school. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. That sense of kind of wonder and possibility and bottomless

00:04:22.280 adventure, that Friday feeling you have when you're young, like that's the feeling I think

00:04:27.420 we're all yearning for. Well, let's talk about the history of weekends because I think we take

00:04:32.580 weekends for granted. Everyone listening to this podcast has lived in a world where there's always

00:04:36.980 been weekends unless there's some 120-year-old person listening to this podcast. But it's a

00:04:43.260 pretty recent idea that you get two back-to-back days of no work or school. So let's do like a

00:04:50.260 crash course in the development of the weekend. Like when did we first start seeing this push where

00:04:54.160 you would get some time off at the end of the work week just to do whatever you want?

00:04:58.960 Yeah. Well, I mean, it's kind of a fascinating history and it's not an accident. It didn't just

00:05:06.160 happen. People fought and people actually died for us to have these two days off, to have a reasonable

00:05:12.580 relationship to our work. So really the idea of time changed with the industrial revolution. Okay,

00:05:21.320 let's go back there where people went from what used to be called task time to clock time, right? So

00:05:27.880 like before with work in an agrarian society, like if you'd have three cows to milk, the amount of time

00:05:34.000 that would take you is three cows time, right? But then industrialization takes place and the clock

00:05:40.680 changes time. Time becomes measurable, right? It's the beginning of data, right? So now you have 20

00:05:45.880 minutes to milk three cows and you're paid for the time, not the task. So time gets commodified. And with

00:05:51.600 the industrial revolution, of course, you know, workers' conditions and we have those Victorian images of

00:05:57.540 Victorian factories with people, you know, starting in the dark and ending in the dark and limitless

00:06:03.260 amounts of work in the service of these new factories and productivity, productivity, productivity,

00:06:09.900 right? So organized labor kind of rises up out of that in the 19th and early 20th century as a

00:06:17.540 response to this mass industrialization and this shifting relationship to time. And we see an era of

00:06:26.200 protests. So the weekend is one of the victories of organized labor. So yeah, fighting for an eight

00:06:34.100 hour day, that was the very beginning of the labor movement that fought for the weekend. The big event

00:06:40.880 in Haymarket in Chicago in 1836, I hope I'm getting that right, was 76 rather, 30,000 people marched for an

00:06:49.280 eight hour day. And, you know, bombs went off, police fire, police fired shots, eight people died. There

00:06:55.220 was a court, you know, a massive trial. So like sacrifices were made, like blood was spilled. That

00:07:00.600 was for the eight hour workday. The eight hour workday slid into the two day a week, the idea that people

00:07:07.380 didn't need to work seven days a week and could get two days off back to back. And that of course is

00:07:13.000 even farther back, rooted in the Sabbath, right? That, that idea that there needed to be one day

00:07:18.900 a week, this kind of edict from God that like people didn't have to be indentured servants to

00:07:24.060 the Pharaoh that's in the Bible, right? That, you know, the slaves were building granaries for the 0.97

00:07:29.520 Pharaoh endlessly and needed a day off. So, you know, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, all of these

00:07:37.360 monotheistic religions have one day a week that's, that's supposed to be a break, you know, depending

00:07:43.400 on which religion, of course, you know, that, that it's executed in different ways. But the idea that

00:07:49.720 there is time where to tend to spiritual self, a self outside of work where one's identity isn't just

00:07:55.480 tied to productivity, but expanded. So, you know, these things have kind of collided to give us those

00:08:02.140 two particular days, the Saturday and the Sunday. But now, of course, things look quite different.

00:08:07.800 Right. So, okay. So we have Saturday and Sunday. I think that was because there's basically was

00:08:12.340 like, well, Jewish people, they're going to take Saturday off. Christian people, they're going to 1.00

00:08:16.780 take Sunday off. So to accommodate, we'll just make it Saturday, Sunday is the weekend. Because

00:08:20.300 there was a moment where there was like, the weekend was like Sunday, Monday, like Monday was

00:08:25.340 the unofficial second weekend. Like people were supposed to go to work, but they were like, yeah,

00:08:30.420 I'm not doing that.

00:08:32.020 I prefer not to. Yeah. It's actually funny. There was a fake saint invented called Saint

00:08:39.200 Monday. And in England, people would not show up on Monday and they'd say, I am honoring Saint

00:08:47.100 Monday. This was not a real saint. And what they were is probably hungover. And Benjamin Franklin

00:08:52.340 actually wrote about that and was very irate about the slovenly Monday holiday takers. So,

00:08:59.460 yeah, eventually things kind of reverted and that Monday became part of the work week. But

00:09:04.500 you're right. Like there was a long tradition of people just, if they got this, just the

00:09:08.980 one day off, they made it too anyway.

00:09:10.780 And then also you saw this movement as well after the labor movement where you saw some

00:09:16.740 factory owners or company owners embrace the idea of a weekend because they thought, well,

00:09:22.320 actually our employees are happier and they're more productive when they take those two days

00:09:26.800 off. I think, I mean, Henry Ford is famous for, you know, paying a decent wage, but he's

00:09:31.320 also, hey, you don't need to work all the time. So you can go enjoy yourself and buy cars.

00:09:36.220 And for me, and they saw, they caught on the idea and they really bought into it.

00:09:44.400 Yeah. I mean, that's a great example of that shift because it's true. Employers know that

00:09:52.400 workers who are overworked are not great employees. People who are overworked and burnt out introduce

00:09:57.440 more errors into the work that they do. They aren't more productive. And so it benefits workplaces

00:10:05.120 to manage the spread of, of work hours. And yeah, Henry Ford realized that. And he needed

00:10:14.500 his employees to not only be working reasonable hours, but to have time off to buy the products

00:10:20.420 that they were making. Right. So it's like, I mean, it's a kind of tricky dance of capitalism,

00:10:25.440 the idea of the weekend, because it is so tied to consumerism. So yes, on one hand, it's like

00:10:31.180 very altruistic of him and, you know, other business leaders to give people time off, but

00:10:36.540 also really benefits them to have consumers out in the world. Because when it was just

00:10:41.060 a Sunday, then of course that's a true day for Christians anyway, like a true Sabbath and 0.99

00:10:46.880 you're not supposed to be shopping. So give them the Saturday, they'll go buy the cars, you

00:10:51.360 know? So, so you're right. Like this is, has been a long kind of evolution to get to where

00:10:57.360 we are now. All right. So we, by the early 20th century, the weekend was established that

00:11:02.300 this is a norm that you do, but then towards the end of the 20th century, you start seeing

00:11:06.820 the weekend wane. So what are the numbers say? Like, you know, how many, like what's the state

00:11:12.600 of the weekend starting at the end of the 20th century and today?

00:11:16.780 Yeah. Well, so first of all, I would say it's hard to measure. And I think that right now,

00:11:23.480 particularly in, in the last decade, it's getting harder and harder to really understand

00:11:28.220 how much people are working because of the borderlessness of work, right? Because we are

00:11:34.780 so literally like our bodies are wired to our workplaces 24 seven. So even if it, we are in

00:11:41.800 an office, maybe now it's a virtual office, nine to five ish, you know, most people will

00:11:47.220 probably in particularly in white collar creative class jobs report that they are taking emails

00:11:52.480 and texting outside of that conventional work timeframe. So it's, it's hard, but here's

00:11:59.840 what I think we know, or here was the research that stood when I wrote my book, which was that

00:12:05.240 overall hours have remained pretty steady in North America for about, about 30 years, which

00:12:13.100 is around 35 hours a week. But what we see is that educated and high wage earners are working

00:12:18.480 much longer than, than 50 years ago. Self-reports suggest some, up to half of white collar workers

00:12:26.340 are working 50 hours a week or more, not that 35 hours or more. And then on the service side,

00:12:32.140 we have underemployed and less employed workers. So it kind of averages out to this 35 per week.

00:12:40.200 So are we working more? Are we, or are we working less? It depends what the work is. It depends,

00:12:48.480 you know, what kind of work you managed to get. And particularly now in this gig economy,

00:12:53.120 many people in lower paid fields are working several jobs at once. Right. And then of course,

00:12:59.600 there's the side hustle. So it's a slippery amorphous thing. This question, this question,

00:13:06.060 like how much are we working? We're working a lot. And certainly anecdotally, we hear this all the

00:13:12.760 time that when people are asked to rate the quality of their lives, one of the first things that comes

00:13:18.580 up is concern about being busy. And I think that that has actually endured through COVID, which I

00:13:22.920 find really interesting because there was that moment at the beginning of COVID where I think we

00:13:26.240 all thought, Oh, we're going to get a break. Like now we're really going to back away. And our quality

00:13:30.660 of life is going to improve so vastly. And I'm not sure that that has borne out. I guess we'll,

00:13:35.420 we'll be finding that out. I hope so. Okay. Everyone, pretty much everyone across the spectrum

00:13:41.040 are, they're doing some type of work on the weekend. If you're in a white collar office job,

00:13:45.960 you might be answering emails Saturday, Sunday, taking care of, you know, things while you're

00:13:50.700 shuttling kids to sports. But then if you're in a service sector job, a lot of that's the stuff

00:13:55.300 like weekend is when you, you're probably working restaurants, movie theaters, amusement parks,

00:14:00.200 retail, Uber driver. And so the people in service, they might get,

00:14:04.880 some days off, but it might not be Saturday, Sunday. It could be Tuesday, Thursday. So it's

00:14:11.240 like, so there's like a, like, so there's an asynchrony going on with weekends with when

00:14:15.940 our, in our culture, like everyone's not having the weekend at the same time, basically.

00:14:20.580 Yeah, for sure. Yes. This conventional 40 hour work week that maybe our parents had this Monday

00:14:28.000 to Friday, nine to five, it really does feel like a thing of the past. Basically you, you kind of

00:14:34.200 never know when people are working anymore. Don't you find this? I find like if I'm contacting

00:14:38.040 someone, I'll get out to, you know, I'm off this Wednesday, but I'm working Saturday or I'm,

00:14:42.500 you know, not working Thursday. I work every second Friday. Like, and I've had that myself

00:14:47.200 and my, I'm working, actually working in a podcasting company and I was working four days a week and then

00:14:51.820 it shifted to five and then some weeks it's three. And that's also a real result of contract work,

00:14:57.260 right? This shift from a full-time staff salaried positions to contracts.

00:15:05.620 Yeah. And that affects us on a cultural level. Like it's, if you can't, you can't make,

00:15:10.180 hang out with your friends if you guys aren't off at the same time, or you can't do things as a group

00:15:15.360 if everyone's working different days of the week.

00:15:19.160 Yeah. There's not a kind of collective experience of the week, right? Like what is,

00:15:25.140 what is our shared time off when everyone is on a different calendar? Yeah. It really does

00:15:31.500 change the kind of social fabric of our communities for sure.

00:15:36.960 So we're working more on the weekends, but any other things that have encroached onto the weekend

00:15:42.400 that makes the weekend like, you know, your son's like, man, was that it? Like what else is happening

00:15:47.060 besides work? Well, I, I mean, you know, I, I think secularization is a big piece of this,

00:15:56.100 right? Like we, that idea. And I think whether you're a religious person or not, it's kind of a

00:16:02.440 beautiful concept that there's a time in the week where you can hit an off switch and remember who you

00:16:12.700 are outside of your work identity. And of course, without a religious motivation for that, it

00:16:18.460 becomes, you know, it's no longer an edict and it's no longer even a kind of social norm. So

00:16:25.480 we lose something in terms of the, our kind of spiritual self. I really think that, and I don't

00:16:32.000 mean that in a necessarily an organized religion way, but that, that kind of space in which to ponder

00:16:38.260 and wonder and just be kind of in the world, you know, and rather than in the workplace or even

00:16:47.140 so mentally distracted and mentally kind of compromised or like compartmentalized that you

00:16:54.560 can no longer kind of just be in the moment. So I think that's one thing that's happened with

00:17:00.140 the advent of a more secular world. I think technology is what we keep circling here and maybe

00:17:06.360 haven't kind of said out loud, which is just that having our offices in our pockets is a completely

00:17:12.440 different way to work, to live, to live into work, right? And life and work, that line between the

00:17:18.820 two is pretty much non-existent now. And of course we lived this to its fullest during COVID when many

00:17:24.840 people were working from home and literally had their workplaces in their bedrooms. So, you know,

00:17:30.040 where are those boundaries between workspace and personal space? They literally don't exist for many of us

00:17:35.460 anymore. And, but there's an expectation to, I think that comes with this moment of total

00:17:41.220 availability, like and total commitment to work. This is a status symbol to be busy, to be overworked.

00:17:49.080 It still has a lot of currency. And that's something that I've always been kind of interested in. Like

00:17:55.000 why are our identities? And actually I think for men, maybe for your listeners, this is something that

00:18:00.280 they are probably thinking about, like that success and acquisition, workplace status. Now I hear a lot

00:18:07.360 about legacy from the older men that I know. And all of these things are bound up to work, not necessarily

00:18:12.860 bound up in the same way to our accomplishments as human beings. You know, how loving of a parent or a

00:18:19.600 partner or how valuable a member of the community, but you know, how much money did I make? How far did

00:18:27.300 I advance in my, in my workplace, in my work life? And I think that this kind of fetishization of

00:18:33.740 success, which is ongoing now for a long time is another one of the big pieces of, of why we lost

00:18:41.800 the weekend or decided that it wasn't a priority anymore. And, and for me too, when I'm not like

00:18:47.760 working, there's also, I feel like Saturdays are like the catch-up day. It's where you do like my

00:18:53.700 wife and I, we call them doodads. It's like you do all this stuff, like the admin, life admin,

00:18:58.960 pay bills, fix things, go to Home Depot five times because you always forget the one thing. Or then

00:19:05.060 you're like taking kids to sports. And when Saturday's over, you're like, man, that, that was not fun.

00:19:10.400 Yeah. Don't feel refreshed. No. I mean, the two most common things that people do on weekends are,

00:19:16.980 are shopping and chores, right? Which is, I don't think either of those things are necessarily,

00:19:24.160 I mean, sometimes shopping can be fun, I suppose for some people, but neither of those things are,

00:19:28.580 as you say, a lot of fun. Yeah. And kids, I think in busy families and the scheduling of kids,

00:19:37.400 kids are so, I, you know, overscheduled. This was something I really, my kids are getting older and

00:19:42.200 I, and of course COVID, but one thing I've really noticed is how much time I have back

00:19:47.860 because they're more independent and I don't have to hover as much and do as much schlepping of the

00:19:53.940 children. And that is, those kinds of things really do eat up a weekend and it's what we have to be

00:20:00.020 on guard against or the whole weekend could go like in the blink of an eye.

00:20:05.100 Yeah. I mean, you talked about in the book with your experience, like your, I guess your kids play

00:20:08.540 hockey and that just seems like, man, that seems like so time intensive. You know, that all the

00:20:12.620 equipment you got to buy and like, you got to be early at the games. And that was something you

00:20:16.660 struggled with. Like your weekends were eaten up by hockey games. I'm sure a lot of parents who

00:20:20.240 their kids play soccer or baseball can relate to that as well.

00:20:23.380 Yeah. I mean, yeah, I'm in Canada, so it's hockey, but everyone, I think everyone with

00:20:29.880 kids has some version of this. Yeah. It was an issue for us so much that actually we made

00:20:37.180 a decision or in our, you know, one that our son in particular was happy to go along with

00:20:42.220 and our daughter who also plays hockey, which was, we're sticking with house league because

00:20:46.260 we dipped a toe into the world. You know, this is, I think actually like where we see a transposing 1.00

00:20:51.120 of some of the things we were just talking about, about this urge for success and status.

00:20:56.000 I think a lot of that is kind of being projected, you know, with the best of intentions mostly

00:21:00.080 onto the lives of kids. So playing house league isn't really enough. Like we've got to get the

00:21:06.400 kids, the private coaching and the weekends away and they're in select or they're in more competitive

00:21:16.120 tiers with more games, more practices, driving them in and out of the city. I mean, those, those are

00:21:22.220 like the true hockey parents will be up at 4am during the week and then, and then it's hockey

00:21:28.600 all weekend. And, you know, I think there are kids for whom that is, it's a passion that can't

00:21:34.760 be denied. I'm not suggesting that anyone, you know, punish their children unduly or whatever.

00:21:40.160 But if you're a family where this has taken over, it might be really good to look at it and just say,

00:21:45.320 is this the childhood that I want my kids to have? Because there usually does come a point in

00:21:51.260 adolescence, many of these kids are going to burn out. They're not going to take pleasure in it

00:21:56.060 anymore. They're going to notice that it's been kind of professionalized and that the measure of

00:22:02.940 their engagement is, is about succeeding rather than playing and taking joy in it. And I think

00:22:11.480 it can be kind of an infection in families, this, this high level overachievement. So what we did

00:22:17.660 eventually, and maybe it's also just some kind of laziness, I don't know, you can judge me if you

00:22:22.700 want, was like, we said house league only, like we just can't, we don't want to live like that.

00:22:26.580 And it bought us back some time, which I think was worth it. I think it was worth it,

00:22:30.740 but maybe you should ask my, my son. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our

00:22:36.200 sponsors. And now back to the show. So let's talk about how we can take back our weekends

00:22:43.180 because you highlight research. You know, if you want to, if you're worried about like,

00:22:47.180 if I take two days off, this is going to like, I'm going to get behind in work. I'm going to set

00:22:51.740 myself up for failure. If you're a business owner, it's like, man, if I, if I don't, if I can't reach

00:22:56.200 my employees during the weekend, uh, we're going to fall behind in the competition. The research

00:23:00.720 shows that that's not going to be the case. In fact, working more hours, there's a declining

00:23:05.420 benefit. Like at a certain point, there's just a diminishing returns on, on working long hours

00:23:12.360 without breaks, introduce errors. It can cost companies money. And on a personal level, of

00:23:17.140 course, there's burnout and health and all of those expenses are often incurred by employers

00:23:23.740 ultimately. Right. And countries with really long work hours report depression and high,

00:23:29.280 high suicide rates among, among their workers. So yeah, like 40, 40 to 50 hours is pretty reasonable

00:23:37.500 above that. People will start introducing errors into their work. And it doesn't mean that they'll

00:23:42.780 be making less, more widgets. If they're working 60 hours a week, it means they're probably making

00:23:47.480 less and more of them will be of low quality, whatever those widgets are and, you know, fatigue and,

00:23:53.760 and overwork are often causes of medical malpractice suits. The challenger space crash had an element.

00:24:00.900 There was a, you know, the cause, there's an element of, of fatigue in their oil spills. Like all,

00:24:05.760 like we, we, we see over and over that there are serious ramifications for overwork that employers

00:24:12.640 will, will bear out and not to mention the, you know, personal and the social toll of climate in which

00:24:18.620 people are expected to work to the point of utter exhaustion. So yeah, productivity is not actually

00:24:25.180 that closely tied to number of hours worked. Okay. So you make the case, one of the things you

00:24:31.120 can do to start making your weekends more refreshing, enjoyable, reviving is one thing you should make

00:24:37.220 your focus your weekend is it's all about connecting. So what are some ways that you've added more

00:24:42.040 social connection in your weekends? I mean, one thing we really know about the erosion of the

00:24:48.500 weekend is that it coincides with a kind of erosion of personal and social connections. And when we look

00:24:55.840 at what makes people happy, it's actually not the things that correlate with work, right? So it's not a

00:25:01.880 higher salary. It's not success. Yes. I think they say, what is it? $70,000 a year. That's a salary at

00:25:09.140 which people will be able to maintain a decent lifestyle. And also their anxiety will be assuaged

00:25:15.780 anxiety about money. Anything below that of course will affect happiness, but say you have that kind

00:25:19.760 of average decent salary and a decent job. That's not the thing that's going to really affect your

00:25:27.940 happiness. What it is, is your connections to other people, right? Your social life, who you've loved,

00:25:32.920 who loves you back, how much you matter in your community and to the people around you. Our happiness is

00:25:38.480 intrinsically bound. It's a sense of belonging, right? Not wealth, not status. And if we don't

00:25:44.600 have time, it's very, like, it's kind of a simple equation. If we don't have time to strengthen those

00:25:51.980 bonds, then we are less happy and less fulfilled as people. So yeah, on the weekends, I usually,

00:26:01.900 when there's not a pandemic on, would try to see somebody outside of my family for sure.

00:26:06.960 Just make sure that I'm checking in on people, remind myself, and I tend to be kind of introverted,

00:26:14.980 that being introverted is not necessarily the best way to move through the world.

00:26:20.780 And also to give something back to my community if I can. So periodically we'll try some kind of

00:26:27.860 volunteer exercise or just engage in a community meeting. Or I do, I'm involved with a writer's

00:26:34.140 group where we do workshops and underserved communities with doing creative writing

00:26:39.200 exercises. And these things are kind of small and maybe sometimes they feel, you know, or they might

00:26:44.900 seem from the outside, like meaningless gestures, but they kind of give me a profound sense of value.

00:26:53.440 And then I have, like, a kind of physical buzz. Like, there is something, you know, a definite

00:27:00.760 correlation, biological connection between altruism and feeling good. Like, you get, like, a rush,

00:27:07.560 right? Don't you think?

00:27:08.320 I think so, yeah.

00:27:09.220 From doing things for other people, right? Coming out of yourself a bit?

00:27:12.680 Yeah, no, yeah, for sure.

00:27:14.560 Yeah.

00:27:14.780 And, you know, you also talk about, you know, for people who are religious, the weekend is,

00:27:18.760 they have, like, a baked-in social connection. Because if you're a Christian, you're going to

00:27:22.680 go to church, you're Muslim, you're going to a mosque on Friday. If you're Jewish, you're going 0.99

00:27:26.500 to a temple. And they've got that there. But you also highlight people, like, non-religious people.

00:27:30.840 You gave an example. There's, like, you found this group, a bit like secular humanist, who they'd

00:27:35.660 get together at Panera Bread and they just chat about pretty much anything.

00:27:41.280 Yeah, that's right. I love that group. Well, yeah, so here's an upside of technology. It's, like,

00:27:48.360 you can kind of find anyone who shares an interest that you have, right? Like, they're the meetups

00:27:53.660 and social media and Facebook. And if you can migrate some of that online connection into real

00:28:02.360 world connection, hobbies are a really great place to meet people. And hobbies, I think, are

00:28:08.400 one of the other, another kind of collateral damage of the erosion of the weekend. We have a lot less,

00:28:15.060 people seem to have fewer hobbies than we used to. And hobbies are fantastic for that, again,

00:28:21.660 that feeling of coming out of yourself and hitting that kind of flow state, like that deep immersion

00:28:26.560 in any activity that's not monetized. It's not for profit or personal gain or status, but just

00:28:33.820 something that you love and lose yourself in. That feeling, that hitting that kind of flow state

00:28:40.640 and, you know, falling down into something. And if you're doing it in a room of other people who are

00:28:45.500 into this thing, too, even better, right? Like, I know that, like, where I live, there used to be a

00:28:50.200 whole bunch of knitting clubs and people really love this stuff. Then, you know, it kind of awakens

00:28:55.480 something in you that's sort of spiritual, that's definitely creative. I think it definitely pulls our

00:29:01.140 humanity forward and reminds us that we are people outside of work. Our identities aren't just tied to

00:29:09.100 our workplaces and our work selves, that we are fully fleshed humans.

00:29:13.900 Right. So, make connection to the top priority. If you're going to church, go to church. If you

00:29:18.000 don't do that, find a group. Or even just, like, use the time to, like, just connect with your family

00:29:22.240 or reconnect because you guys have been crazy all week going to different places. Just have a day where

00:29:26.620 we're just going to hang out. Like, we're not going to have anything planned, but we're just

00:29:30.380 going to be around each other. Yeah. Yeah. I think not having anything planned is a really

00:29:35.440 great phrase. And I'm glad you reminded me of that because I do think this compulsion to schedule

00:29:41.840 even our leisure, and I'm a little bit guilty of this myself, where I'll be like, well, I have to

00:29:47.560 work out or, you know, everything becomes an obligation. But sometimes just meandering with

00:29:55.400 your family, you know, getting in the car or getting over to a park and just being together

00:30:01.780 without an agenda is really powerful. Boredom is really powerful, right? It opens up all manner of

00:30:09.180 kind of pathways in our brains and our hearts. And, but yeah, I think, you know, we can take our

00:30:14.820 families for granted because they're around us a lot these days. And so we assume that we're

00:30:20.380 connected with them, but we're often, you know, heads bowed over our devices, everyone in their

00:30:26.460 own corners in the same building or same apartment or same house, but not really together together.

00:30:33.080 So taking that time and putting away the devices and, and, you know, having a cooking together,

00:30:39.520 doing something active together, you know, is there a sport you would all play or,

00:30:44.820 you know, some kind of physical active engagement with one another, just to remind

00:30:50.520 each other that you're more than just coworkers in a family structure, but actually people who's,

00:30:58.640 who you want to spend time with getting to know. And it sounds very basic, but I, I feel like I

00:31:04.680 definitely need a refresher on that sometimes because you can get just so caught up in the panic

00:31:09.380 of, of getting through contemporary life that you forget who's by your side.

00:31:14.120 You mentioned that just get in the car and drive. That was actually a thing. Like on Sunday,

00:31:17.680 my mom talked about doing that when she was a kid, like the Sunday drive, you just get in the car

00:31:22.660 and the fitness, where are you doing? We're just going to drive. In fact, we were, we've been

00:31:25.920 reading, uh, we just got done reading cheaper by the dozen with our kids.

00:31:29.860 Oh yeah.

00:31:30.660 Yeah. You know, classic novel written in the forties. And one of the chapters is about how they take a

00:31:35.100 Sunday drive with all 12 of the kids take a picnic. And that was it. That was like, that sounds,

00:31:40.400 and I've done that before. And it just sounds, it's just really relaxing. You don't have a

00:31:44.440 destination you're trying to get to. You just kind of drive around and look around. It's enjoyable.

00:31:47.960 Yeah. I love that. And also it doesn't cost too much, you know, because I think so often we think

00:31:56.080 we need to pay for our experiences and that idea of getting in a car and driving, or if you don't

00:32:03.360 have a car, I live in a city when our kids were younger, sometimes we would get on the subway

00:32:08.180 and go to a neighborhood we'd never been to and just walk around. And it doesn't always

00:32:14.500 mean shelling out to curate a perfect afternoon. Sometimes just spontaneous and cheap and dirty

00:32:23.460 is a way to do it on the weekend for sure.

00:32:26.660 So you mentioned hobbies are a great way to spend the weekend. As that leads me, you had a chapter

00:32:30.420 about recreation and you make this case that oftentimes when we think about recreation,

00:32:34.840 recreation, we do it wrong. There's, you said there's two types of recreation. There's passive

00:32:39.820 and active recreation. And you, you argue mostly when we choose recreation, we go with passive.

00:32:46.580 So what's the difference between passive and active and why should we choose active over passive?

00:32:51.840 Yeah. So I mean, passive recreation is you kind of know it when you're doing it. It's the kind of

00:32:57.660 what we do when we tune out and kind of, you know, binge watch a series or just check out kind of

00:33:06.440 emotionally or, and physically the, one of the phrases that someone used for this was spectatoritis

00:33:12.160 watching, you know, watching rather than doing, which is great. Like we all need that sometimes,

00:33:18.340 but if that is, if you're kind of operating at such an amped up level all the time, and then when you have

00:33:24.400 that downtime, you just unplug completely and kind of crash into that mindless consumption of,

00:33:31.280 of entertainment or sports or whatever it is. You actually don't come out feeling super rejuvenated,

00:33:37.300 right? It's kind of like a sugar high, right? It's like eating a lot of chocolate or something

00:33:41.800 like it feels good in the moment, but it doesn't actually help with a reset. So active leisure and

00:33:48.040 contrast is something like we've been talking about where you're connecting with people,

00:33:52.220 where you're participating in an activity that's kind of purposeless and not really based necessarily

00:33:59.360 on success or money, but brings you a lot of pleasure and joy. And hobbies, of course, fall,

00:34:04.580 I think fall really nicely under that idea of active, active leisure, where you can be creative and

00:34:11.060 engaged with something. And maybe within a community that kind of feeds this part of yourself

00:34:16.340 that often goes really unnurtured during the work week.

00:34:19.460 And you're saying it's okay to do passive recreation, but don't make it all that you do.

00:34:24.680 And you all say, if you're going to do it, do it with somebody else. If you're going to like

00:34:27.780 play video games, if your kids are going to play video games, make sure they're playing

00:34:31.580 with their siblings or with you even.

00:34:33.980 Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, I think that's nice because it's such a, that's social, right?

00:34:38.240 So you're bringing back in that element of connecting with another person and coming out of the self,

00:34:43.780 but yeah, like, listen, we all need to just tune out and like, you know, have the pint of ice cream

00:34:50.980 and the binge watch or whatever from time to time. But what's sort of alarming is when it becomes

00:34:57.380 the only way in which we unplug. And I think because we, so many of us have so little free time,

00:35:03.800 that's sort of feels like all we, the energy that we have, like that's the most that we can pull off

00:35:11.300 in our free time. Is that really passive watching, not doing, but it's a vicious cycle because you

00:35:18.700 actually end up feeling more burnt out at the, at the end of it. So I think we have to be as vigilant

00:35:24.140 with our leisure as we are with our work, right? Like we're really, most of us are good workers.

00:35:30.640 We want to do well at work and that's great, but I think we need to shift that emphasis a little bit

00:35:37.060 and become excellent at play as well, you know, and take as much joy and pride in our successes

00:35:44.980 at doing nothing. Right. So one thing that happened with weekends, particularly, or now it's,

00:35:53.720 we use weekends to shop, like you said earlier, but there was a time in our history in America,

00:35:59.320 and I'm sure the same was in Canada where on Sunday, they had these things called blue laws,

00:36:03.540 where if you had a store, you had to shut down. You couldn't, you couldn't, you couldn't shop on

00:36:07.660 Sunday. It wasn't an option. You make the case that you might get something out of your weekend.

00:36:12.220 If you sort of institute a personal blue law day where you don't do any shopping,

00:36:17.080 how has that made your weekends or how can that make your weekends better?

00:36:19.680 Yeah. Well, you know, we're talking about a kind of like lead stage capitalist condition,

00:36:28.020 right? This, this lust for work, this veneration of work. And of course, work is tied to consumption,

00:36:35.120 right? It's been called by economists, the work spend cycle. We work a lot so that we can spend

00:36:42.500 a lot. And then because we've spent a lot, we have to work more. So we go round and round

00:36:47.300 on the hamster wheel. So breaking that pattern, that neural pathway is, I think, really important

00:36:56.580 to, again, to just be reminded that there's a larger world out there. So if we don't engage in

00:37:07.800 the shopping and the consumption on the weekend, then we get that space back. We get the time back.

00:37:13.180 And that's so much, you know, that I think if there's anything that people might get out of this

00:37:18.540 book, I would hope that it's a kind of like fierce impulse to protect their time. And consumption,

00:37:27.640 does it make us happier? I don't think so. I certainly haven't seen any research that suggests

00:37:33.720 that buying more stuff fills the hole that many of us have inside. So maybe don't for a while,

00:37:43.000 take a break for a couple of weeks. There are lots of these experiments online when people

00:37:47.200 will talk about not shopping for two days or a week and seeing what it feels like. And I think

00:37:52.780 we're all so mildly addicted to consumption that it can be quite a shock to our systems. And all these

00:37:59.360 other ways of being in the world might open up if we break that habit. So yeah, I think it's a really

00:38:06.160 neat idea to try and recreate your own blue law day here and there if you can swing it.

00:38:11.800 Yeah, I hate shopping because it's the time factor. Even online shopping, it doesn't save

00:38:16.600 you any time because especially if you buy clothes and you're like, well, I got it. This doesn't fit.

00:38:21.360 I got to take it back. He's like, well, I got to box this up. I got to drive over to UPS or some

00:38:27.420 Amazon. It's just like, I'd rather just, I don't even, books are the one thing I buy where I enjoy a book.

00:38:34.400 Right. It does feel like books online, at least you're in like, it's words. You're already in a

00:38:40.800 word kind of world online. So it makes sense. But yes, I totally agree. And God, the online shopping,

00:38:48.220 again, this borderlessness, right? Like at least with shopping before, we used to have to leave our

00:38:54.000 houses to do it. So we would be, we'd at least be sort of outside. But now, you know, you can

00:39:01.240 literally go back and forth between working and spending in a two minute period without leaving

00:39:08.160 your chair. And I do feel like it's dangerous and become sort of habit forming and yeah, sucks up all

00:39:14.000 of that time. All right. So try not to shop or at least do less shopping on the weekends because

00:39:18.860 that'll free up some time for you. You also recommend trying to tame the amount of chores

00:39:23.860 you do on the weekend because for a lot of people, the weekend can easily turn into just doing chores

00:39:28.280 and that's it. And you can do that in different ways. One way is spreading the chores out throughout

00:39:32.540 the week. Or if you got the budget for it, maybe outsource some of your chores. So overall, the

00:39:37.780 advice is take time to connect, engage in active recreation, and then limit shopping and chores.

00:39:45.120 So how do you approach your weekends in a way so that you feel like you're getting the most out of

00:39:50.000 it, but it doesn't become another project and you feel like, I didn't do this weekend right because

00:39:55.040 I didn't allow enough time for spontaneity and relaxation. So how do you avoid that while

00:40:00.960 getting the benefits of a good weekend? Yeah. I mean, listen, I certainly don't want to turn

00:40:06.580 the weekend into another feeling of failure for people. I don't think there is one way to do the

00:40:15.540 weekend. But I think making that space, that space physically, like noticing if that calendar is

00:40:26.020 filling up, being really thoughtful in the week leading up to the weekend to say,

00:40:30.400 what is this weekend? Like, what's the balance of my weekend here? Yes, of course, we're probably all

00:40:35.880 going to have a bit of work to do, but what's the balance? Like, am I looking at like a day and a half

00:40:42.200 of work or work every hour? Can I log off for 24 hours straight and then do something on that second

00:40:50.320 day? But just above all vigilance, really, about how precious this time is, how fleeting it is.

00:40:58.600 It's funny, when I wrote this book, my son was, I think, 12 or, you know, was published, he was

00:41:04.100 probably 13. And now he's finished high school. And a lot of the concerns that, you know, I have a

00:41:09.800 daughter who's still in high school, but I, you know, was really plagued by when I was writing this

00:41:13.020 aren't really relevant to us anymore. And I have never once sat around and said, gee, I really wish

00:41:20.640 we had done select hockey. And I had done more chores that year. You know, like, all I think now

00:41:28.580 is, oh, God, that time is gone. And I can't get it back. So I would just say, those weekends, if you're

00:41:35.700 lucky enough to have a work life that gives you those two days, to guard them, to look at them

00:41:41.600 with the same as a kind of a sacred space, the way that religious people look at an actual Sabbath,

00:41:49.900 you know, to approach them with the same kind of sense of honoring that time and making the most of

00:41:55.940 it with that's kind of clear eyed and not being hard on yourself, but really taking it seriously

00:42:04.220 that this time is going to go and this is your life. And is your life going to be filled with

00:42:10.280 experiences and other people and joy and love and laughter and all those cheesy things? Or is it going

00:42:17.880 to be, I got a really big paycheck and I never turned my phone off? Maybe somewhere in the middle.

00:42:24.840 Somewhere in the middle. Well, Katrina, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to

00:42:28.420 learn more about the book and your work? Yeah, the book is available everywhere, I hope. It's called

00:42:33.660 The Weekend Effect. And my website is www.katrinaonstad.com. Fantastic. Well, Katrina Onstad,

00:42:41.020 thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much. My guest today was Katrina Onstad. She's

00:42:45.700 the author of the book, The Weekend Effect. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

00:42:49.520 Make sure to check out our website at katrinaonstad.com where you can learn more about her work.

00:42:53.220 Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash weekend, where you can find links to resources

00:42:56.960 and we delve deeper into this topic.

00:43:05.500 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website

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The Art of Manliness - November 03, 2021

Take Back the Weekend

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