Since resigning from my job, my whole life rhythm (how I spend my time, when I get things done) is in flux. I often worked nights (two times a week, and the nights changed week to week) and weekends (every third). As you might imagine, it was difficult to have any sort of routine or to feel like I had any consistent "down time." One of my weekends was a 3-day weekend, which was nice, but it always came after working 6 days in a row, so I typically felt like I was spending most of the time getting my life back in order, rather than doing things I wanted to do.
Now that I make my own schedule (one of the perks of working for yourself!), my weekends are consistent and my schedule feels much more balanced. Of course, now that my downtime is more plentiful (or seems that way, anyway), I find myself faced with the exact opposite problem: I have so much free time! What do I do?!
So I was pretty excited to read Laura Vanderkam's latest (short) ebook, What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: A Short Guide to Making the Most of Your Days Off.
Vanderkam is big on looking at time in terms of many hours are in a week (168, in case you were wondering), so she begins this guide by noting that there are 60 hours between 6 pm Friday and 6 am Monday. Assuming you sleep for around 24 of those hours, that still leaves 36 hours for doing whatever the heck you want to. And therein lies the rub.
As Vanderkam points out, "You would not take a 36 hour per week job without asking what you intend to do with it and what you expect the outcome to be." So why should the weekend be any different? Time, after all, is not infinite.
How are you going to make the most of your weekend?
While doing nothing is certainly appealing (especially if you've spent the week slogging away at a job that doesn't fulfill you), it's not actually that helpful in terms of living a full, wonderful life. Vanderkam uses the analogy of cross-training to show how doing other kinds of "work" (like volunteering, excercise, or another creative hobby) is actually the most beneficial thing you can do to get ready for Monday morning.
And, as adverse a reaction you might have to putting the words "weekend" and "plan" together, you need to have a plan. After all, most organizations that utilize volunteers don't really appreciate you just showing up any time you want on a random Saturday. And if you're determined to make it to a yoga class on Sunday, you'd probably want to take a look at the studio schedule in advance and decided which class you're going to.
Planning your activities also helps you derive more joy from the actual event due to the anticipation factor. Plus, it will keep you from missing out on something because of logistics, like a sold-out movie showing or not being able to arrange for a baby-sitter.
Exactly how much planning should you do? No one wants to feel like their weekend is as tightly scheduled as their weekday. Vanderkam advises selecting 3-5 anchor events, spread out over the weekend. These anchor events should be things you want to do, not have to do. The weekend might still feature some have-to-do's (and Vanderkam includes great advice for minimizing those), but those shouldn't be anchor events. A trip to the movies, a visit to a museum and Sunday brunch could be one weekend's anchor events.
In addition to examples of awesome weekends, Vanderkam also discusses the 6 secrets of successful weekends, as well as the final piece in the "perfect weekend" pie: planning the week ahead.
One of Vanderkam's closing thoughts really resonated with me. "The impulse to do nothing leads to feeling like we're missing out on our own lives." I'll admit to loathing a lot the past couple of weekends. Part of it is probably because it's a slow time of year, with everyone recovering from the holidays. Part of it, too, is me giving into my impulse not to plan anything for the simple reason that it's been a long time since I've had a real weekend on a consistent basis. Whatever the reason, it's left me unfufilled on Sunday night.
How would I like to actually spend my weekends? I wouldn't mind finding a knitting group that met on Saturday mornings. Tackling small organizational projects around our house would be great because everything feels better when the house is relatively in shape. A date night (especially somewhere new) would be nice, too. Grabbing coffee with a friend or having dinner at my parents' house would round things out nicely. What stops me from actually doing these things? None of them even cost a significant amount of money (except maybe date night, depending on what we end up doing). This weekend I'm going to aim for planning a couple of anchor events, like giving my closet a thorough clean out (and maybe rewarding myself with a trip to Starbucks when it's all over).
In any case, I highly recommend What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend. It's a quick read and costs less than a trip to Starbucks. And while you're at it, pick up What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast if you haven't already (I reviewed it here).
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