I love Sundays. I love the empty streets in the morning. I love the slow unfolding of the time, without the buzz of the daily hustle you get on the working days. I love the promise of a slow, still undecided, possibly surprising day.
Even the morning coffee tastes better on a Sunday morning. To get the most of this “special coffee taste” I deliberately switch coffee shops on weekends. I go to one type of coffee shop during the week (larger, with more space for work and more choices for coffee and food), and to another type during weekend: smaller, more prone to human contact and with limited, but very high quality coffee. I walk a lot more for those, because they’re usually in areas more secluded, or outside the mainstream routes. But I also walk more just to impregnate myself with the clarity and laziness of the Sunday morning, and to increase the pleasure of the reward once I get there. The more I walk, the better the coffee tastes.
Almost always there’s more human contact in these spaces. Freed from the burden of work and outside the coercion of being there because they have to, most people in these small coffee shops are way more willing to interact. It’s almost like they’re there just to find other people to talk to. The fact that they don’t know yet those people is part of the excitement. Who knows who they’re going to talk to today?
I confess I really look forward to these encounters. Weekends are islands of unexpected, but somehow predictably enjoyable social interactions.
Time spent in such a context is not wasted time. I use the term “laziness” when referring to these days, but it’s not laziness as in refusing to work, or even procrastination. It’s more like switching to a lower gear, doing things in slow motion, taking out the pressure and syncing with the flow.
Laziness, in this case, is just another word for “recharging”.
And recharging is fundamental. Because all progress happens when you stop, not when you’re struggling. You can only derive knowledge after the obstacle has been left behind, during the struggle you’re way too focused (and that’s exactly how you should be).
That’s why you need these islands of insight, these time pockets in which the world is moving differently. To adjust your lenses, internalize the lessons and enjoy the scenery.
For a while. Then back to work.
