What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend Quotes

“Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert talks about this phenomenon in his 2006 book, Stumbling on Happiness. “The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real,” he writes. “The frontal lobe—the last part of the human brain to evolve, the slowest to mature, and the first to deteriorate in old age—is a time machine that allows each of us to vacate the present and experience the future before it happens.” This time travel into the future—otherwise known as anticipation—accounts for a big chunk of the happiness gleaned from any event. As you look forward to something good that is about to happen, you experience some of the same joy you would in the moment. The major difference is that the joy can last much longer. Consider that ritual of opening presents on Christmas morning. The reality of it seldom takes more than an hour, but the anticipation of seeing the presents under the tree can stretch out the joy for weeks. One study by several Dutch researchers, published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life in 2010, found that vacationers were happier than people who didn’t take holiday trips. That finding is hardly surprising. What is surprising is the timing of the happiness boost. It didn’t come after the vacations, with tourists bathing in their post-trip glow. It didn’t even come through that strongly during the trips, as the joy of travel mingled with the stress of travel: jet lag, stomach woes, and train conductors giving garbled instructions over the loudspeaker. The happiness boost came before the trips, stretching out for as much as two months beforehand as the holiday goers imagined their excursions. A vision of little umbrella-sporting drinks can create the happiness rush of a mini vacation even in the midst of a rainy commute. On some level, people instinctively know this. In one study that Gilbert writes about, people were told they’d won a free dinner at a fancy French restaurant. When asked when they’d like to schedule the dinner, most people didn’t want to head over right then. They wanted to wait, on average, over a week—to savor the anticipation of their fine fare and to optimize their pleasure. The experiencing self seldom encounters pure bliss, but the anticipating self never has to go to the bathroom in the middle of a favorite band’s concert and is never cold from too much air conditioning in that theater showing the sequel to a favorite flick. Planning a few anchor events for a weekend guarantees you pleasure because—even if all goes wrong in the moment—you still will have derived some pleasure from the anticipation. I love spontaneity and embrace it when it happens, but I cannot bank my pleasure solely on it. If you wait until Saturday morning to make your plans for the weekend, you will spend a chunk of your Saturday working on such plans, rather than anticipating your fun. Hitting the weekend without a plan means you may not get to do what you want. You’ll use up energy in negotiations with other family members. You’ll start late and the museum will close when you’ve only been there an hour. Your favorite restaurant will be booked up—and even if, miraculously, you score a table, think of how much more you would have enjoyed the last few days knowing that you’d be eating those seared scallops on Saturday night!”
― Laura Vanderkam, What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: A Short Guide to Making the Most of Your Days Off

“You have fewer than 1,000 Saturdays with each child in your care before they’re grown up.”
― Laura Vanderkam, What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: A Short Guide to Making the Most of Your Days Off

“Planning a few anchor events for a weekend guarantees you pleasure because—even if all goes wrong in the moment—you still will have derived some pleasure from the anticipation.”
― Laura Vanderkam, What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: A Short Guide to Making the Most of Your Days Off

“Namely”
― Laura Vanderkam, What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: A Short Guide to Making the Most of Your Days Off

“As Anatole France once wrote, “Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.”
― Laura Vanderkam, What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: A Short Guide to Making the Most of Your Days Off

“What the most successful people know about weekends is that life cannot happen only in the future. It cannot wait for some day when we are less tired or less busy. If you work long hours, then weekends are key to feeling like you have a life that is broader than your professional identity—even if, and probably because, you take that identity very seriously. The marathoner knows that rest days and cross-training days spur physical breakthroughs.”
― Laura Vanderkam, What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: A Short Guide to Making the Most of Your Days Off

“Success in a competitive world requires hitting Monday refreshed and ready to go. The only way to do that is to create weekends that rejuvenate you rather than exhaust or disappoint you.”
― Laura Vanderkam, What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: A Short Guide to Making the Most of Your Days Off

“This is the paradox of weekends: “You have to set an appointment to go off the grid as surely as to go on it.”
― Laura Vanderkam, What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: A Short Guide to Making the Most of Your Days Off

“What the most successful people know about weekends is that life cannot happen only in the future. It cannot wait for some day when we are less tired or less busy. If you work long hours, then weekends are key to feeling like you have a life that is broader than your professional identity—even if, and probably because, you take that identity very seriously.”
― Laura Vanderkam, What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: A Short Guide to Making the Most of Your Days Off