Weekend or Week never-end?

Hi Monday me, meet Saturday me.

Does the day of the week affect how we see ourselves?

I got reallyyy used to eating at home Monday through Thursday. Friday and Saturday were reserved for potential dinner plans with friends, my boyfriend, or some solo takeout, and Sunday was a food shopping + lazy, slow cooking kind of day.

But my schedule has looked, and felt, a lot different lately; despite not working a 9-5 Monday through Friday for a few months (but still feels so bizarre to me…), and being years out of school at this point (eek so washed up!!), my sense of a Monday-Friday week and Saturday-Sunday Weekend has surprisingly stayed pretty unshakable. 

I anticipated a looottt of things to change but didn’t really think that going out to dinner would be such a topic of conversation, but lately, my boyfriend and I have been confused which night we should go out to dinner. Neither of us has a "normal" work schedule, but I still mentally sort the week like I always have - weeknights for cooking, weekends for going out, Sunday for groceries. I've been off that schedule for a while now, but I'm still operating on its rules.

And so going out on a Friday still feels like the “thing to do”, given there is an energy that you just can’t get on a Tuesday night on the town - but I teach every morning except for Tuesday & Wednesday, so are those my new weekends? I tried, but it just didn't feel the same. Again, partly from the absence of humans around us in restaurants when we go out on a weeknight, but I also feel a different lack of synchronicity entirely

I also realized: Even if I had successfully rewired my brain to label Tuesday as the new Saturday (and to truly feel that way), why do I need a Saturday? 

Is it just that I need a “day of rest” (or two), is the problem that most of us have jobs we just get through, waiting to live until the weekend? Well, I don’t have this problem (right now!), so why do I still need a Saturday?

While debating all of this, the interesting question really comes down to this: 
How much of the way I experience my days is actually mine, and how much of it did I just inherit?

The Fresh Start Effect

So, naturally, I looked it up! There's actually a name for this kind of thing. Researchers at Wharton call it the Fresh Start Effect. The idea is that certain days act as "temporal landmarks" - Mondays, the first of the month, New Year's, etc. - and they psychologically separate your past Self from your future Self. It's why the diet starts on Monday! Not because Monday is metabolically superior, but because we've collectively agreed that Monday means "new chapter”. Yes, that’s partially due to logistics - we have more time for “fun” (assuming work does not = fun in this case), so we are more social, stay out later, maybe drink (more). We have plans and so therefore, we have a plethora of excuses. 

But it goes deeper than just logistics and habits. The whole structure of the week - weekdays for work, weekends for living - becomes a belief system about when you're allowed to enjoy your life. We defer without realizing it. 

"I'll start Monday."
"I'll relax this weekend. Or on that vacation”
"I'll deal with that after the holidays." 

There's even research showing that when people anticipate an upcoming fresh start, they put in less effort now… like, measurably less - because they trust their future Self to pick it up later. This is why we “let ourselves go” during the Holiday season so often; Yes, partially due to logistics, the celebratory nature of our plans in general, and habits; but it compounds with a belief that come New Year’s, we will be a completely different (and better! more disciplined! healthier!) version of ourselves

I didn't notice how much of this was going on in my mind until the past few weeks. It was gradual… but at some point I realized I wasn't counting down to Friday anymore. Not because every day suddenly felt like the exciting, almost-Friday-night buzz it used to, necessarily. But also not because everyday gave me Sunday scaries. Just because every day started feeling like... I don’t even know? a day? Not a weekday. Not a weekend. Just a day. An everyday that was a blend of some weekday elements and some weekend elements.

So, what if we can actually intentionally integrate these two elements together? And, so what if we can?

Self-Concept Clarity

It turns out the difference in our belief of who we are on a Monday versus a Friday, or January 1 versus New Year’s Eve, is actually a named concept in psychology called self-concept clarity. It’s basically how stable your sense of who you are feels on any given day. 

This study found that this sense of Self fluctuates day to day. Not in a crazy, rollercoaster crisis way, but just in a quiet, background way. Who you are on a Wednesday is slightly different from who you are on a Saturday. And not because anything changed, but because your perspective of Self changed.

Monday-you is productive, focused, maybe a little on edge. Friday-you is lighter, a little more fun. Weekend-you gives yourself permission to do things that weekday-you wouldn't. We don't just assign tasks to different days; we assign versions of ourselves. And we do it so automatically that it feels like that's just... how we are on those days. Like Mondays are inherently heavy and Saturdays are inherently free, even if we did the same exact thing on both days.

But the reality of that is, we don’t do the same thing on a Saturday that we do on a Monday. The schedule is real -  most people work during the week, and that's not going away. But the way we feel about those days? The heaviness of Monday, the permission of Saturday? That part isn't inherently built into the calendar. We added it. And then we stopped noticing we added it… Or at least, I did!!

When I lost the Monday-through-Friday structure, I lost some of the versions of myself that went with it. The "weekday me" who powered through and the "weekend me" who got to breathe. And that’s been disorienting for sure. But, what I eventually realized is that those were never two different people. I was just letting the calendar decide when I was allowed to be which one; creating a mode we slip into and out of without choosing.

And so, I must ask:

can we use this to our advantage? How?

I don't think the goal should be to eliminate the structure - it can be so useful. But I do think there's something to letting weekday-you breathe a little more and letting weekend-you stay a little more intentional. Not so that every day feels the same, but so that every day feels like yours.

We practice this in Yoga a lot: 

• You notice when you're pushing because your body wants to and when you're pushing because you think you should. 

• You notice when you're soft because you need to be and when you're soft because you're checking out.

It's  practice of real-time observation of which version of you you're being and why ( here’s the Svādhyāya (self-study) we discussed in last week’s newsletter), but really it's just: paying attention to which version of yourself showed up, and whether you chose it or defaulted to it. 

This is important because it can allow us to: 

• Keep promises to ourselves more often.

• Stop delaying joy & pleasure; not push off new experiences. 

• Reclaim time we didn't even realize we were giving away to autopilot.

• Make better decisions about how we spend that time - not based on habit, but on what actually matters to us right now.

And so, the mat is actually a great place to practice mixing the weekday and weekend versions of ourselves - show up on a Monday morning and let yourself be soft, or show up on a Sunday and let yourself work harder than you have all week. 

Not for the sake of reliving the teenage-rebellion thrill of skipping class in the middle of a school day (Me? Never!! I know my Mom reads this); but because you're paying attention to what you actually need instead of what the day is telling you to be.

A great way to do this is to just freaking make the plans during the week. 

I am the queen of an early bedtime, but reframing my days to intentionally choose what is worth my time, versus having the name of the day dictate what was worth my time, has changed not only my openness to experience (New restaurants on a Tuesday night! Crazy me, I know!), but the way I perceive and show up for myself.