A Weekend With Nothing to Show for It

I didn't accomplish much this weekend.

Friday night, I went to a sound bath. It's something I do about once a month. An hour or so of lying still, listening, and—for once—not trying to get anywhere. I absolutely love it and that's probably enough of a reason to go.

Saturday, I spent the day at a spa with a girlfriend.

We talked. We ate. We sat in various Japanese thermal pools. We moved from one room to another with absolutely no urgency whatsoever.

This morning, I sat on the floor with my son trying to figure out how to put a green roof on a Lincoln Log house. It was more complicated than it sounds, but he eventually figured it out before I did.

Later, I went for a walk with my husband and our dogs. And then made homemade chocolate pudding with my youngest son.

And that's about it.

No big accomplishment.

No particularly productive use of a weekend.

And I'm beginning to think that's the point.

I've been calling it my self-care weekend.

And technically, I suppose it was.

A sound bath. A spa day. Time with a friend. All the things we're told we're supposed to do when life gets busy and we need to "fill our cup."

But this morning wasn't self-care.

I was just building Lincoln Logs with my kid.

The walk wasn't self-care either.

I was walking with my husband.

And the more I thought about it, the more I wondered when we started needing a category for all of this.

We call rest recovery.

A walk is movement.

Time alone is self-care.

Playing with our kids is being present.

Seeing friends is filling our cup.

Even doing absolutely nothing has somehow become something we need to explain as necessary for our future productivity.

Rest so you can perform.

Slow down so you don't burn out.

Take care of yourself so you can keep taking care of everyone else.

Adam Grant, one of my favorite authors, once wrote:

I keep coming back to that word: productive.

Why are we so determined to make even the things that aren't productive somehow serve productivity?

What if rest doesn't need to make us better at work?

What if playing doesn't need to develop a skill?

What if time with people we love doesn't need to "fill our cup" so we're ready to pour from it again?

What if some things are allowed to be worthwhile simply because we enjoyed them?

What if that's not the point?

What if some things don't need to make us better? A contrarian way of thinking…I know!

I like achieving things.

I like goals. I like momentum. I like the feeling of making progress toward something that matters to me.

I'm not interested in pretending ambition is the problem.

But I am increasingly interested in what happens when achievement becomes the primary language we use to decide whether our time was well spent.

Because when that's the measure, a weekend like this can look remarkably empty.

And I've learned what happens when I treat weekends that way: I arrive at Monday feeling almost as exhausted as I did when the prior Friday finally rolled around.

There isn't much to show for it.

So for this weekend, I decided to think differently.

No medal chasing.

No finished projects.

No impressive story when someone asks, "What did you do this weekend?"

I went to a spa.

I walked the dogs.

I built Lincoln Logs.

That's pretty much it.

But measured differently?

I spent an evening being still.

I spent a day laughing and talking with a friend.

I sat on the floor while my son and I spent far longer than you'd expect figuring out how to get a tiny green roof onto a Lincoln Log house.

I walked beside the person I've built my actual house and life with.

That's not an empty weekend.

That's a full life.

I think high achievers can be particularly bad at this.

We're good at making things count.

We can turn almost anything into progress.

Exercise has metrics.

Garmin tells me every morning what my sleep score was.

Books become a reading goal.

Hobbies and passion projects become side hustles.

Rest becomes part of the performance plan.

And perhaps sometimes that's useful and important.

But I'm starting to wonder whether, in our effort to live intentionally, we've accidentally decided that everything needs an intention.

Maybe it doesn't.

Maybe the walk doesn't need to improve my cardiovascular health.

Maybe the sound bath doesn't need to make me more resilient.

Maybe building Lincoln Logs doesn't need to make me a more present mother.

Maybe Saturday didn't need to "recharge" me so I could come back stronger on Monday.

Maybe I was allowed to enjoy Saturday because Saturday was mine to enjoy.

There's something else I've noticed when I slow down.

My attention gets smaller.

In a good way.

The temperature of the water.

A conversation that goes longer because nobody is checking the time.

Two dogs walking slightly too fast.

A kid determined to get a roof onto a house.

The person walking next to you.

Maybe slowing down isn't really about doing less.

Maybe it's about noticing more.

These aren't the moments we tend to put on a goal sheet.

But when I think about the life I'm actually trying to build, they're awfully close to the point of the whole thing.

And maybe that's what I'm learning about the wider measure.

It isn't always about finding a better way to measure success.

Sometimes it's about letting an hour, a morning, or an entire weekend matter without measuring it at all.

I didn't accomplish much this weekend….and I'm surprisingly okay with that.

Do one thing this week that doesn't improve you, advance you, optimize you, or produce anything.

Don't track it.

Don't turn it into a habit.

And resist the urge to justify why it was good for you.

Just let it be part of your life.

— Nikki