ACTIVITY: The Eighth Day of the Week
How would you spend an extra day *every week*?
An Extra Free Day, Every Week
Many years ago in The Art of Non-Conformity, I wrote about the model of thinking through an Ideal Day. The basic idea is that if you're not sure what you want to do with your life, it can help to imagine an ideal, perfect Day from start to finish.
This includes everything from what time you get up in the morning to what you have for breakfast to how you spend each part of the day—lots of big and small details.
But what I’ll show you here is a little different, because there are two big limitations to the Ideal Day model: first, there's a lot of pressure in it. Whoa, I have to decide what my perfect day is? That makes me anxious!
We’re supposed to be decreasing that sense of pressure, not adding to it.
Second, what you do on a single perfect day might be a lot different than what you'd do if you could repeat this day over and over.
The solution to both limitations is: instead of thinking about this single, perfect day, think about an imaginary eighth day of the week. This day is just like it sounds—it's an extra day that comes along every week, maybe between the weekend and the following week, or maybe midweek.
On this day, it's as though time actually stops. Not just time, but all of the external forces that usually occupy your time go on pause. No one’s expecting anything from you. Also, the day doesn’t have to be idyllic or perfect—it’s just that the day is yours, and it repeats.
How would you choose to spend this day, not just once, but again and again—an extra 52 days a year? For example:
What could you learn in a year?
What could you accomplish creatively in a year?
What’s a big dream you've been deferring?
Those are just a couple of prompts that might get you thinking. Speaking of thinking, try not to overthink this process. Just go with what feels right at first.
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The Eighth Day of the Week activity is different from other goal-setting exercises. Instead of imagining a single, perfect, idyllic day, think of an extra day that arrives every week for the foreseeable future.
Try to identify at least five things that come to mind. Don’t censor yourself—if you have a longer list, you can always be more selective later.
Keep in mind that this day repeats, so you can choose activities that build on themselves over time: learning a language or other skill, for example, or writing a book. Or something entirely different!
One note: for the sake of ideating, you can’t use this day to “catch up” on all the things you’ve fallen behind on during the rest of the week. Also, assume that you’ll be well-rested, and that no one else will be depending on you for something during this day.
Inner work can be frustrating because personal growth takes longer than our intellectual parts think it should. Internal Family Systems (IFS) calls these intellectual parts “managers“ because they try to manage and control our lives. If they can THINK a solution, they believe – why can’t we have that solution today? The reality: inner work isn’t logical, it’s biological. Trees don’t magically become larger just because they think they can; they grow ring-by-ring, year-by-year. So do we.
Thinking is fast; feeling is slow.
I’ve created an eighth day of the week for myself every two weeks. I take the day off from all external responsibilities, stay home, and do all the inner work I want! I usually end up doing about three or four hours of IFS.
Caveat: I developed this capacity over time with a combination of my own practice and a TON of training and support. I spent 15 years in IFS trainings and workshops (2300+ hours) to learn the skills. The capacity to do inner work doesn’t fall out of a tree; it doesn’t come naturally. But it is a positively reinforcing cycle where the more you learn and practice, the better you get, and then the more you can do on your own.
By giving myself excessive amounts of time to do inner work, I radically reduce the impatience, distress and frustration managers naturally experience on the self-transformation journey.
Having done over 7,000 hours of Internal Family Systems psychotherapy on myself over the last 22 years, I have an embodied understanding of how long it takes to transform myself. There are things that have easily taken 20 or 30 hours! But if I have a day every two weeks where I’m doing three or four hours of inner work, I can tell my managers — hey! We’ve got the time, no worries, let the process unfold just as it wants to.
The best inner work is strange, chaotic, and unpredictable. It’s full of tangents, daydreams and curveballs. The more time and space I give the process, the more results I get, with less stress and resistance.
In mental health, nothing has a higher return on investment than deeply healing core wounds. So I use my sixteenth days doing just that, and it’s my favorite 2 days of the month.
Perfect day =
- Wake up without an alarm at 7 am
- Sip a cappuccino sitting next to the window and reading
- Read for at least an hour
- Enjoy a nice breakfast (maybe eggs, maybe yogurt — depending on my mood)
- Play padel with friends
- Eat a delicious lunch
- Lounge around the rest of the day without looking at any screens
- In bed by 9