There is a particular magic to a Sunday spent in leisure. It is a day that gives room for the body to fully recover and relax. The week’s noise has finally cleared out, and for a few hours there is nowhere else you have to be. No alarms, no commutes, no ‘quick catch ups’.
The question then arises: how best to fill those quiet hours? Should one curl up with a good book, lose oneself in music or podcasts, or simply surrender to the deep comfort of extra sleep?
There is something profoundly satisfying about settling into a favourite armchair with a novel, particularly one, you don’t have to read. It’s not for work, or self improvement. It’s on a list of books that will make you cleverer by Tuesday. You’re reading simply because the first line pulled you in and now it’s 3pm and you’re still in your pajamas.
Sunday reading is different. Weekday reading is stolen in fragments on buses or between meetings. Sunday reading sprawls. You make tea and forget to drink it because a character has just done something unforgivable. You lie on the sofa with one leg hanging off and the book balanced on your chest. You go back to re-read a paragraph because the way it was written made your throat catch.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a paperback with a cracked spine, a library hardback, or a novel on your phone. It doesn’t matter if you finish it. The point isn’t productivity. The point is that for an hour or three, your mind lives in the world of the characters and your shoulders drop two inches.
There are also Sundays that aren’t not for words on a page. They’re for sound. Music, podcasts, rain on the window, your neighbour’s questionable taste in 90s R&B drifting through the wall. Listening is the most generous kind of rest because you don’t have to do anything at all. You just receive.
Put a record on. Let an album play from start to finish the way it was made, instead of skipping every 30 seconds. Make a playlist called “Sunday Slow” and fill it with songs that feel like warm milk. Or don’t make anything. Put the radio on and let someone else choose. There’s a particular joy in hearing a song you forgot you loved and realising your body still remembers all the words.
There is also something revealing about what people choose to listen to on a day like this. One person leans into old-school soul and suddenly the kitchen feels like a memory they have never actually lived. Another reaches for Afrobeats and the whole room starts moving before they even notice it. Someone else plays soft indie tracks that make folding laundry feel like part of a film scene. A Sunday playlist says more about a person than most conversations ever could.
And then there is movement. Dancing while you make tea. Singing without lowering your voice because there is no audience to impress. Light chores carried out with music in the background, shoulders lifting, feet tapping, the rhythm finding its way into everything from washing dishes to making the bed. It is not performance, it is release.
Podcasts have their place too, but the Sunday rule is simple: nothing that makes you feel behind. No “ten ways to monetise your side hustle” while you are trying to eat toast in peace. Choose the ones that feel like a chat with a funny friend. The ones where people tell stories about disastrous holidays or explain how biscuits are made. Listening should feel like being tucked in, not wound up.
Then there is the purest form of Sunday indulgence: sleeping. You say it plainly to yourself: today is for sleep. You close the curtains at 1pm, put your phone in another room, and give your body what it’s been asking for since Wednesday.
Sunday sleep doesn’t have rules. You can have a “disco nap” for 20 minutes and wake up feeling like you’ve been rebooted. You can have a full, luxurious three-hour stretch that leaves you confused about what day it is. You can lie in bed till eleven and call it a lie in.
Or you can do the in-between version, where you keep drifting in and out, half aware of the fan above you, half in whatever dream your brain has decided to run with. You open your eyes, check the time, and immediately decide it is not worth getting up yet. When you eventually wake, you feel more refreshed than you’d felt all week. And that is really the point of it.
There is always something you are expected to be doing with your time. If you’re not working, you should be exercising. If you’re not exercising, you should be learning. If you’re not learning, you should be networking. Not on Sunday.
Make the tea and pull your blanket up. Open the book, press play, or just close your eyes. Let the hours go unaccounted for. Let the day be gloriously lazy.
Monday will come with its emails and its urgency. It always does. But for now, the light is soft and the house is quiet and there is nowhere else you have to be. So read, listen to your favorite songs or sleep. Whatever you decide, it’s your Sunday…
Written by Aliyah Olowolayemo
