There’s no rule saying you have to be productive every single day of your life. 

Most people wake up each morning with a fairly clear idea of how their day will unfold. A common staple of the morning routine is either making or reviewing a list, and whether it is a mental list, a paper list, or a digital list, it’s meant to be a map of the day, an itinerary for life’s next 24 hours. Everyone’s map looks a little bit different, and some people are quite good at leaving room in their schedule for something unexpected and delightful to happen, but more often than not, days are planned out in detail and are highly structured. The upsides to this are efficiency, predictability, and productivity. The downsides are the illusion of control, an emphasis on busyness, and a decrease in spontaneity and serendipity. While every day can’t be unstructured, consider making one day a week a completely undesigned day.

On an undesigned day, there are no concrete plans⏤and if nothing happens, that is entirely OK.

On an undesigned day, you let life come to you⏤and if nothing comes, that is perfectly acceptable.

On an undesigned day, you go with the flow of the day⏤and if the day flows nowhere, so be it.

On an undesigned day, you look for ways to say yes⏤and if nothing presents itself, you say yes to the nothingness.

If you’ve ever taken an aimless walk or an aimless drive, you know it’s not uncommon to stumble upon something completely unexpected, like a street festival, a local fair, a farmer’s market, a musical performance, a race, a garage sale, a protest, or a feast day. Not being tethered to an agenda creates a space for serendipity and discovery. It’s like treasure hunting, except you are letting the treasure find you. One of the beautiful things about a truly undesigned day is that it can just as easily become a day of spontaneous adventure as a day of quietness and solitude and rest and reflection. You could just as easily end up kayaking down a river with a group of strangers as sitting alone by the banks of that same river and watching it roll by all day long.

Certainly, you deserve a single day each week with no agenda, no commitments, no obligations, no schedule, no? Let’s say you have 30 more years to walk this earth; that’s 10,950 days. If you give yourself one undesigned day a week, that’s around 1,560 days set aside for yourself and whatever the winds bring you. Sounds lovely.

Copyright 2023 Kesel Wilson (entirely, 100% human-created)

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