Agnes by Tony Cochran for January 24, 2014

There’s a lot to unpack here. The prefrontal cortex (which allows you to value long-term goals over short-term goals) isn’t fully developed until your early 20’s); kids are notoriously bad at the Marshmallow Test (you can eat the marshmallow now, but if you wait an hour you can have two marshmallows).

But there’s also the point that an unexpected free day now may simply be more valuable than a scheduled free day later. If your Summer break is 89 days rather than 90 days, will you really know the difference? Isn’t an unexpected free day, even in January rather than June, a better deal?

I don’t much like three-day weekends. There-s not much I can do in three days that I couldn’t do in two. If I’m getting an extra weekday off, I like it to be Wednesday.