People Who Spend Their Weekends Sleeping In, Eating & Being Lazy Are Way Happier For One Main Reason
Krakenimages.com | ShutterstockPeople who refuse to waste their weekends on unpleasant tasks like cleaning and grocery shopping are living life right. That's what happiness expert and researcher Cassie Holmes asserts. She thinks taking a lazy approach to those few days off is the secret to true joy.
We're all familiar with the Sunday Scaries, that anxiety and stress that can severely impact how we tackle the workweek. It can be hard to rest and enjoy your weekends because they either feel too short or are filled with a laundry list of errands and responsibilities. People who tweak their mindset and start treating their weekends more like a holiday, however, bypass that Sunday night dread and have a happier, healthier outlook on life in general.
People who spend their weekends like they're on vacation are way happier.
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In an article for Harvard Business Review, Holmes described the 2017 research she and her colleagues ran on over 400 working Americans. On a Friday, she told half the participants to treat the weekend like a vacation and told the others to spend it like they would any other weekend.
When measuring their happiness afterward, she found that those with a vacation mindset reported greater satisfaction and positivity when they went back to work.
Most Americans struggle with simply being lazy on the weekends.
"The problem is that Americans are really bad at taking vacations. Compared to workers in the European Union, Americans spend more hours in the office each week and take less time off," Holmes wrote. "Americans don’t even use the few vacation days they are allotted: More than 50% of Americans leave their paid vacation days unused each year."
Holmes isn't exaggerating in the slightest. According to an August 2023 survey from the Pew Research Center, 46% of U.S. workers who receive paid time off from their employer took less time than they were provided. Some worried about falling behind at work, while others thought it might risk losing their jobs.
Holmes explained that the results of her experiment showed that "those who had treated their weekend like a vacation were significantly happier than those who had treated it like a regular weekend." She stressed that, without taking any extra time off from work or spending any additional money, the simple mindset shift asking them to treat their weekends like vacation days made them feel much less stressed about going back to work on Monday.
People with a vacation mindset on the weekend did 'less housework' and felt comfortable 'staying in bed longer.'
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"Yes, the 'vacationers' behaved somewhat differently: doing less housework and work for their jobs, staying in bed a little longer with their partner, and eating a bit more," Holmes observed. "These differences in activities, however, weren’t responsible for their increased happiness."
She added, "Instead, treating the time like a vacation seems to have shifted people’s mindset. Specifically, the vacationers were more mindful of and attentive to the present moment throughout their weekend activities."
Being more present in our everyday lives and not exhausting ourselves, especially on the days when we don't have to, can drastically improve our moods. There's definitely this belief, at least for some people, that they need to be doing something productive every second of the day, and on weekends, if they're just bed-rotting, it can be easy to feel guilty about it.
However, research has shown that, rather than ruminating on the past or getting distracted by anxieties or fantasies about the future, increasing your attention to the present moment makes you more attuned to the pleasures already right in front of you. It helps you savor these little moments without stressing yourself out about what's going to happen next.
A majority of Americans don't feel 'satisfied' with their lives.
It seems there is a whole lot of merit to Holmes' suggestion that people start treating their weekends like vacations, given that many Americans don't feel happy or satisfied with their lives.
According to a February 2024 poll by Gallup, the percentage of Americans who say they are 'very' satisfied with their personal lives has neared a record low. The poll found that 47% of Americans consider themselves "very satisfied" with their lives, 31% of Americans are "somewhat" satisfied with how their personal lives are going, 11% are "somewhat" dissatisfied, and 9% are "very" dissatisfied.
While there are many reasons to feel dissatisfied with life, especially given the state of the world, it's important to make sure we're not neglecting our needs.
Allowing ourselves to appreciate small joys, like spending the weekend eating junk food and lazing on the couch, can truly stop us from dreading the start of a new week.
Nia Tipton is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.
