The Case For Taking Wednesday Off

A UT professor says disrupting the usual rhythms of the work week gives your brain and body a way to recharge.

By Joy DiazAugust 29, 2018 3:36 pm

Dawna Ballard says Wednesday is the best day to take off from work. We call it “hump day” for a reason, after all.

Ballard is an associate professor of communication studies at UT Austin. She teaches about time – not managing it, but its social construction.

This year’s Fourth of July holiday, which fell on a Wednesday, is a case in point, as Ballard recently told the website Quartzy.

“Our life is shaped by pacers,” Ballard said. “Two simple ways to think of these pacers are the day and the work week.”

Ballard points out that our biology tells us when to wake or sleep, and our bodies fight back if we ignore those imperatives.

“Social pacers act in much the same way,” she says.

The work week repeats, and plays out in patterns.

“It’s important to come back to your own internal pace,” she says. “And we do that on the weekends.”

So, Ballard says, taking off from work on a Wednesday disrupts the power of the work week. “Then we get to come back to our own internal clock for a day. So you’ve essentially now given yourself, in seven days, two spots where you’re on your own pace.”

Written by Shelly Brisbin.