Life is ticking along. There are no major problems. Still, on Sunday evening, you find yourself wondering, “Did anything interesting happen this week?”
Before overhauling your life, it may help to look separately at the time work drains from you, the time you spend with people you feel at ease with, and the experiences that introduce you to something new. Reducing what wears you down and adding what you miss call for different approaches.
If life feels like a 75 out of 100 right now, try small changes that protect what makes it a 75. The score is just a way of describing how you feel, not a diagnosis or a measurement. There is no formula here that promises to get you to 90.
Before listing what’s missing, name what you want to keep
A room where you sleep well. A friend you can talk to without putting on a front. An evening to yourself. When the good things in life are there every day, they tend to fade into the background.
Start by writing down three things you would want to keep even if other things changed. Perhaps that means keeping weekend mornings free, being able to comfortably afford your rent, or seeing a friend once a month.
Those three things give you something to check new plans against. If taking up more hobbies means losing the quiet mornings you loved, your calendar may look fuller while your life feels more cramped.
Don’t make weekend fun do all the work of recovering from work
By Friday evening, your battery is flat. Saturday goes on recovery, and only on Sunday do you feel ready to do anything. If that is the pattern, look for one way to reduce the drain during the week before adding more options for your days off.
Suppose the requirements for a presentation or report keep expanding just as you are about to finish it. Before you start, ask, “Who will use this to make what decision?” and “What needs to be done for this to be ready to hand over?” This is not a way to cut corners. It is a way to avoid climbing the same hill three times.
If you are reconsidering your working environment, a phrase like “a workplace with plenty of freedom” does not tell you much on its own. Get specific about the situations that tire you out: how often you are interrupted, messages after work, or how much say you have in the way you do your work. That makes it easier to identify the conditions you want to change. Different ways of working suit different people.
Don’t ask someone close to you to make up all the missing points
Having someone you can safely admit your struggles to can change the feel of everyday life. Some people want a romantic partner; others want to deepen their connections with friends or family.
Look beyond the label on the relationship to what it is like to be together. Can you say, “I’d like to rest on my own today”? Can you talk things through when you want different plans? Can you visit somewhere new and enjoy seeing what each of you finds interesting?
Even a short meal or a walk can tell you something. Whether someone respects a small “no” matters just as much as the conversation on an exciting evening together.
Even if you feel lonely, asking one person to solve work exhaustion, boredom, and worries about the future all at once is a lot to place on them. Leave room both for nurturing your connections and for taking care of your own life.
Add one experience that changes how you see an otherwise quiet day
Oishi and Westgate propose “psychological richness” as a dimension of a good life alongside happiness and meaning. It describes a life that includes varied, interesting experiences that change your perspective. They present it as related to, but distinct from, happiness and meaning, not as a better way to live than either of them. Original paper
You might open a book on a subject you rarely read about. Visit a local exhibition and wonder why someone made what you are looking at. Ask a friend, “What’s interesting about your work that someone on the outside wouldn’t see?”
Fresh experiences do not have to mean traveling far away or doing something frightening. Even one new question about a familiar neighborhood can make your next walk a little different. These are examples of things to try, not prescriptions with guaranteed effects.
Don’t turn a good time into a performance review
If you keep asking yourself, “Has this made me happier?” while you are out, you end up being both the person having the experience and the person auditing it. That makes for a busy day off.
In a 2011 study by Mauss and colleagues, placing a high value on happiness was associated with lower well-being under certain conditions. In an experiment, participants who were encouraged to value happiness also had a less positive response to a pleasant film clip than those in the control group. The research was limited to particular participants and circumstances; it does not establish that everyone who wants to be happy will become unhappy. Original paper
If you want to reflect afterward, you do not need to ask how many points you gained. “Would I do that again?”, “Did it leave me tired?”, and “Did I discover anything I want to tell someone about?” are enough.
This week, reduce one drain and try one thing
Shorten one task that keeps dragging on. Spend a little time with someone you want to see. Stop by the exhibition you have been curious about. You do not need to fit all of it into this week.
First, choose one way to reduce what wears you down. Then choose one thing you would like to try with the energy that frees up. If this is a week when you need rest, you can use that space to rest.
Keep what is already good, and give next week’s version of yourself one new thing to talk about. An answer to that feeling of something missing can start that small.
