One study found that volunteering actually makes people feel they have more time, not less. A good weekend usually involves more than just passive leisure, like spectator sports or binge-watching The Crown. What's more edifying are activities that generate meaning or purpose.

Many white-collar workers are lucky enough to have creative-class jobs that are satisfying, which is great as long as you're still able to carve out true, work-free leisure at some point. But there's been a kind of sneaky reframing of work as play as the Silicon Valley model has been imported into other fields. Now you see adult offices that look like nursery schools, and staff paintball parties, work cultures that encourage the "We're a family here!" fantasy while preventing workers from going home at a reasonable hour to be with their actual families.

It used to be that wealthy people were the leisure class, and having time off was a status symbol. That's switched now: being busy and overworked is the reality for many white-collar workers, and there's a kind of perverse currency to that, competitive busy-ness. At the other end of the income scale, there's a swath of lower-wage workers who are underemployed or unemployed, with too much unwanted leisure, and zero status for that. For shift workers, devices mean they're accessible in ways they weren't before, susceptible to that call from the boss to log more hours.

We know that people who work without breaks get tired, introduce errors, get sick and miss out on life. Make no mistake: those staff room hammocks are designed to keep you in them on the weekend.

When we don't get that escape from our work selves, I think we feel its absence on a deep, almost primal level. Leisure is uncommodified, unoccupied time where we get to be truly free, so feeling bad about missing the weekend isn't just, "Damn, I didn't make it to the mall!" It's a profound loss.

We can do a bit of blaming: the proliferation of devices means we're always at work, always on call, always available. Physically leaving the office isn't a declaration of being off work anymore; your office is in your bag or pocket.

I know Stephen King is uncompromising on the idea that writers should practise their craft every single day, and it clearly works for him. Personally, I relish a day off with some boredom; it gives me space to feel the world, observe, stir up the epiphanies, which I need if I'm creating fiction. On the other hand, I'm a big advocate for beauty and creativity on the weekend, which can be incredibly rejuvenating.