How I Learned to Make the Most of my Weekends

Despite it being kind of an annoying song, “Everybody’s working for the weekend” is a mostly true, albeit depressing, mantra.

Weekends provide much-needed time to relax, run errands, socialize and recharge for the following week. Often my weeks are so rushed that I don’t have time to plan anything for the weekend, but the very best weekends are ones that were thoughtfully planned. 

This past Monday, my colleague Ryan asked me how my weekend was and instead of responding with the perfunctory “It was good,” I thought for a second and realized how great my weekend was and how refreshed I felt on Monday morning. I even replied, “It felt LONG.” (When does anyone ever say that?)

I put together the reasons why that weekend felt so long to help you all make the most of your weekends.

Don’t spend the whole weekend on the couch.

While it might be tempting to turn on Netflix, pull up GrubHub and get cozy for the whole weekend, you will likely look back and feel like you wasted your free time. You should certainly build in time to relax, but don’t let sloth overtake you.

On Saturdays, I typically brew a pot of coffee and settle on the couch with my husband and my dog for an hour or so before starting the day. We catch up on our DVR, talk about what we need to do for that weekend and just enjoy the quiet time. It feels great to spend time relaxing when we normally would be rushing to get ready to get to work on time, but by 11am on Saturday, our house is on the move. We also reserve time on Sunday nights for couch hangs.

Get stuff done.

I don’t know about you, but finding time during the week to grocery shop or go to the dry cleaners/post office/run other annoying errands is almost impossible. My husband and I usually split up our errands – so often you’ll find me sweeping and mopping floors and doing laundry while Adam gets the oil changed, takes the dog to the groomer and gets a carwash. This allows us to get things done quicker so we can focus on the fun stuff and plays to our strengths. I also spend a bit of time on Saturday mornings cleaning out my email and making sure I’m prepared for my Monday morning meeting. I’ve found that waiting until Sunday night to get work done makes the weekend feel shorter and lets Monday creep its way into the weekend.

Plan something fun.

This is obvious – but there have been many weekends where having “nothing to do” sounded so glorious; however, when push comes to shove, sitting around for two days can get boring pretty quickly. We’ve made the mistake of waiting to the last minute to schedule dinner reservations, make plans with friends or buy movie tickets, only to not be able to. Making plans for one fun thing gives you something to look forward to and provides a built-in deadline to get all your errands/work done.

Get outside.

The main reason this past weekend was so awesome was because we spent almost the entire weekend outside. On Saturday, we took our dog to the dog beach for several hours, which tired him out and got us out of the house and to the beautiful Chicago lakefront, where we rarely go. On Sunday, we took a day trip to a Michigan beach we go to each year (sans dog). This gave us much-needed time to swim, snooze and lay in the sun. By the time we got home, we had just enough time to make dinner, clean up and get ready for the start of the week.

The best weekends feel long because of days spent doing a mix of fun stuff and not-so-fun-but-necessary stuff. Working to find ways to maximize your weekend makes for a better start to the week and overall better work/life balance.