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For many Americans, the end of the week resembles the following; it is 6 p.m. on a Friday, your laptop is closed, you might even be back at home, and yet your mind will not stop racing.
Your to-do list migrates from spreadsheets to synapses leaving you worried about bills to pay, groceries to buy, and a leaking tap that needs fixing. For many, the promised relief of the weekend never quite arrives, especially for those whose jobs demand near-constant cognitive effort and attention.
“In today’s world a lot of people are utilizing their brains to think for a living, and then going home and juggling the mental load of running their lives smoothly—bills, groceries, repairs,” Rebecca Anderson, a clinical psychologist based in Sydney, Australia, told Newsweek. “They worry about why they can’t relax on weekends. I believe part of the answer to that is needing to get out of your brain and into your hands and body.”
That distinction—between mental and physical modes of rest—is, according to Anderson, the missing piece for so-called “knowledge workers” who spend their weekdays solving problems, managing people or making decisions, only to find their weekends ruined by the same restless mental chatter.
“If you think and worry for a living, you need a break from the strain of your brain on weekends,” Anderson said. “Otherwise, you’re using a muscle that’s already fatigued. You need a change; something unconnected to daily work.”
Her prescription is deceptively simple; trade cognitive labor for physical, creative activity.
“People use puzzles, painting, gardening, decorating or music to relax,” she said. “These activities tap into creativity, with tangible results in a low-stakes environment, which is very satisfying. I think having one or two creative pursuits for a thinker can alleviate more stress than self-help books can.”
Anderson also pointed to an unlikely source of validation for her approach; Winston Churchill, the British wartime prime minister, who wrote extensively about the restorative power of physical hobbies such as painting and bricklaying.
“If you think for a living but you struggle to relax on weekends, you should take the advice of Winston Churchill,” Anderson said. “He says if your job involves you working and worrying all week, you should not spend your weekends thinking, instead you need to be using your hands and your body to find relief from the strain of your brain.”
Burnout in the US
Anderson’s comments arrive against a backdrop of climbing stress and burnout across the American workforce.
A majority of U.S. adults say their stress levels have risen over the past five years, and roughly 75 percent report experiencing physical or emotional symptoms linked to stress, according to the American Psychological Association.
The pressures are not confined to any single generation or industry. The APA’s polling has repeatedly found that concerns over money, work and the wider state of the world compound one another, leaving many adults feeling they are perpetually bracing for the next demand on their attention.
Workplaces themselves appear to be a primary driver. The American Institute of Stress estimates that 83 percent of U.S. workers experience stress related to their jobs, and about half say they need help learning how to manage it—a gap that experts say leaves many employees without practical tools for winding down once the workday ends.
The strain is not limited to adults already established in careers.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that 29 percent of U.S. high school students—roughly one in three—reported that their mental health was not good most or all of the time over a recent 30-day period, pointing to a broader cultural shift in how stress and anxiety are experienced across age groups.
The figures paint a picture of a population caught in a near-constant state of mental exertion, with few built-in mechanisms for recovery. Anderson’s argument is that traditional weekend “relaxation”—scrolling on a phone, watching television, or simply doing nothing while trying to force relaxation—often fails precisely because it keeps the brain engaged in the same passive, thought-heavy, action-oriented mode that defines the working week.
Instead, she suggests activities that shift the locus of effort away from analysis and worry and toward the hands and the body: kneading dough, digging in a garden bed, sanding a piece of furniture, or losing an afternoon to a jigsaw puzzle. The common thread, she said, is tangibility—work that produces a visible, low-stakes result without the open-ended cognitive load of a spreadsheet or a strategy document.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Kara Dolman and Emma Lee-Sang
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