Remember when a Sunday drive didn’t require a shared calendar, a route calculation, and three days of group-chat negotiations?
In our quest to optimise every free minute, we have managed to schedule the serendipity out of our lives - leaving no room for the very surprises that make life memorable.
Those of us old enough to remember will recall a time when we woke up on a Sunday morning, attended church with our parents and on the way home, your dad took a detour to buy the weekend newspapers and stopped to buy the family milkshakes.
Today, that kind of spontaneity seems to require a lot more planning.
We have calendars, reminders and apps that tell us where we need to be, when we need to be there and how long it will take to get there.
The irony is that many of us are looking for ways to escape our busy, structured lives while simultaneously scheduling the escape months in advance.
There is nothing wrong with planning because it makes modern life possible, but the problem is that when everything is planned, there is very little room left for the unexpected.
The tyranny of the calendar
A spontaneous decision involves uncertainty because you don't necessarily know whether the restaurant will be good, the road will lead somewhere interesting or whether the day will turn out to be memorable.
Our daily rush has made us uncomfortable with uncertainty.
Our phones allow us to check reviews before visiting a restaurant, look at photographs before going somewhere new and plan a route down to the minute.
It’s convenient, but it can also take some of the adventure out of everyday life.
A spontaneous phone call has largely been replaced by a message asking, "Are you free sometime next week?"
And then messages start going back and forth. Tuesday doesn't work. Wednesday is out. Thursday might be possible, but only between 6.30pm and 8pm.
By the time everyone has agreed on a date, the spontaneity has long since left the building.
Many of us have become good at filling time
One reason spontaneity has become harder is that our lives are already full.
There is work, family, gym, errands, household chores and a seemingly endless stream of digital notifications demanding attention, competing alongside the expectation that our free time should also be productive.
This is where spontaneity becomes interesting because it doesn't necessarily require more time, only leaving some time unallocated.
A 2026 study published in Leisure Sciences examined people's emotional wellbeing during everyday leisure and found that autonomy, the feeling that we are choosing what we do, is an important part of the positive experience of leisure.
It sounds obvious, but perhaps many of us have forgotten it. Free time isn't necessarily valuable because we fill it with impressive activities but because we get to choose.
The value of not knowing
Some of the best experiences are often the ones we couldn't have predicted.
A conversation with someone we weren't expecting to meet, a road we hadn't intended to take or a last-minute invitation that wouldn’t have survived a complicated diary negotiation.
There is no guarantee they will be successful, but there is also no pressure for them to be.
Research into leisure and creativity suggests that unstructured free time can reduce our sense of urgency and create space for reflection and the incubation of ideas.
We don’t have to optimise everything
We have become obsessed with getting the most out of everything.
The most popular restaurant, the best route, a holiday with the best view or the most interesting weekend.
Our leisure can become something many people optimise, and when we do that, we risk turning something that should be liberating into another performance. Sometimes some of our worst experiences become the story you remember.
Sometimes getting lost is the most interesting part of the journey.
On a drive to Mpumalanga for a weekend away, I had the GPS voice on silent and managed to take the wrong turn-off. And as GPS systems do, it started telling me to make a U-turn.
I saw that the gravel road I was now on would eventually join our original route and pressed on. At the top of the mountain overlooking a beautiful valley was a small farm stall that sold magnificent homemade ginger beer and pies.
What began as nervous trepidation and an hour-long detour ended with a stunning view, setting the tone for the rest of the weekend.
This prompts a question: Is it truly about what I accomplish, or whether I opted to be here in the first place?
Making room for spontaneity
We don't need to abandon our calendars or become carefree adventurers, but we do need to leave a little white space in them and resist the urge to immediately fill every space.
We spend so much time trying to control the days that we sometimes forget that life is also supposed to surprise us.
In a world where almost everything can be searched, reviewed, mapped and scheduled before we experience it, there is something old-fashioned about going to see what happens.
willem.vdputte@nationalmg.co.za