What did you do this weekend?

If you rode your bike 50 miles or went to five parties or helped build a Habitat house or saw the Rolling Stones live or finally finished your novel or helped your kid build a space ship or learned to play the sax or kayaked the Cape of Good Hope, you're happy to hear this question at the office Monday morning.

But what if you just puttered all weekend? What if you didn't do much more than move stuff from one room to the other, fold the laundry, cook a few light meals, watch four more episodes of "Six Feet Under" and play with the cats?

To putter is to "work lightly," a concept often anathema in our work hard and play hard world, where the most points go for level of excitement, exoticness and exertion, plus the ability to elicit envy in friends, family and colleagues.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has probably never puttered in his life. To read about the intensity of his regular schedule is to first turn dark green, but then a shade of light green, which is what he probably did when he nearly fainted during a jog near the Chateau de Versailles Sunday morning.

The main factor? Fatigue. Official prescription? A little rest. My two cents? A little puttering now and then would do wonders.

I used to make better copy, as they say, than I do today. Back when I spent my weekends sailing through the Soviet Arctic or hiking in Kazakhstan or dancing with the Mudheads at Zuni or touring the porta potties of the Loire Valley or gazing at Lenin in his glass tomb on Red Square.

I haven't entirely given up on adventure, and I don't putter every weekend -- there is more to life than organizing one's socks, after all -- but when I do give into the urge for a quiet Saturday and Sunday, I try to reap its calming, soothing, health-boosting and ultimately energizing benefits.

I've come up with these three sure-fire ways to enhance your own puttering experience:

1. Don't feel guilty. Many people feel it is selfish just to stay home and do nothing but listen to music and change lightbulbs. They feel that if they have not alleviated world hunger, the entire weekend has been wasted. I understand this guilt -- and desire to help others -- but hope that we can let ourselves off the hook from time to time.

2. Don't distract yourself with thoughts of more exciting things you could be doing with your time. Stay in the moment. The fact is that you are not in London at the latest Tate exhibit nor standing in the ruins of Machu Pichu at that particular moment so there is nothing to do but empty the wastebaskets and watch the chickadees squabble in the birdbath.

3. Don't apologize for not having climbed Mount Everest or learned how to make the perfect souffle in the south of France rather than having trimmed old leaves from your indoor plants or thrown out a semester's worth of science experiments from the fridge. Mt. Everest will still be there when you get to it but those leftovers from last month won't wait.

I do some of my best thinking while puttering, just moving quietly through the house.

Other times I put a golf game on TV while I'm puttering. That's because golf provides a metaphor for life -- however imperfect -- with its three-way combination of a powerful swing with a driver at the tee, a less-powerful swing with a smaller club on the fairway and then the gentle, focused swing with a putter on the green.

A lot of these great players -- even the ultimate master Tiger Woods -- can lose a game with lousy putts. You have to be able to drive hard in life but you also have to know how and when to ratchet it down and putt easy. Real easy.