Lifestyle

This Is The One Life Hack You Need To Make A Long Weekend Feel Even Longer

by Alexandra Strickler

I know that there are technically 48 hours between Friday and Sunday, but like... are there?!

I spend so much of the week getting excited for Friday, and then suddenly, it's like I pass through a wormhole, shatter the time-space continuum, and before I know it, the Sunday scaries have fully settled in.

This is a pretty common struggle for most of us, but thankfully, there's a pretty easy way to slow time down (or at least make it feel slower). It just requires a little bit of effort on our part.

According to neuroscientist and Stanford University professor David Eagleman, the key to making your weekend feel longer simply requires a new experience.

Eagleman, who is the author of The Brain: The Story Of You, explained the concept to New York Magazine:

When you go and experience something novel, it seems to have lasted longer. When you're a kid, everything is novel and you're laying down new memories about it. So when you look back at the end of a childhood summer, it seems to have taken a long time because you remember this and that, this new thing, learning that, experiencing that.

But then, as we all know now in the throes of adulting, life seems to move at lightening speed. That's because, to put it simply, we've experienced a lot of stuff already. We can start to see patterns emerging in our experiences, so time just sort of starts to blend together.

But, when you experience something new, your brain basically spends most of its energy processing the unfamiliar information and forming that into a new memory.

And you can interpret a "new experience" in pretty much any way you'd like. Maybe you'll travel to a new city, or you'll stay local to your hometown and try out a new restaurant.

There's one small catch to this, though (other than the fact that you kind of have to be a real person and make some plans that don't involve sloth-ing on your couch yet again).

You're probably not going to notice how slowly the time passed over the weekend until you look back in hindsight.

When you're in the moment, time will likely feel as if it's moving at its usual, terrifyingly fast pace (#MakeAdultingStopAgain). But come next week, when you're telling your coworkers all about your amazing weekend, you'll feel like you're recounting a whole week's worth of activities.

Time is a fickle bitch, that much is for sure.

I know we already have a long weekend with Memorial Day on Monday, but like, WE NEED MORE. JUST A LITTLE MORE, PLEASE.