Start your weekend early

Cultivate a weekend vibe that starts Friday during the workday

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to start your weekend early. By treating the
entire day of Friday as part of the weekend, at

(00:25):
least mentally, you might be able to make this day
feel more special and more fun. So I tend to
be responsible for making the weekend schedule in my family.
On a recent weekend, I saw that Saturday and Sunday
involved a lot of driving kids around and not a

(00:46):
whole lot of things that were going to be fun
for me. Sometimes that is just life. But then, before
I started feeling sorry for myself, I looked at what
was happening Friday and remembered that I was meeting a
friend for lunch, and I had scheduled a massage right
before the usual end of my workday. Saturday and Sunday

(01:07):
weren't going to be particularly amazing. Indeed, I was going
to be working for about two hours on Sunday afternoon,
but I was certainly having some fun. I was just
starting my weekend fun early. Now I realized that some
people don't have any flexibility during their Friday work schedules,
though a lot of people listening to this podcast probably do.

(01:30):
Even if you need to be at your workplace all day, though,
you might try thinking that the weekend starts on Friday
and think about what that might inspire. For instance, you
might ask a work friend to go to lunch with you.
You might deliberately leave some open space to work on
your favorite projects. Maybe you would choose upbeat music or

(01:50):
a favorite funny podcast to listen to on your commute.
Both ways, you might choose more fun activities for your breaks,
reading a good book instead of scrolling around online. You
are cultivating a weekend vibe early. If you work at
home on Fridays, which post pandemic I know a lot

(02:13):
of people do, then you have more options. Think about
what could make the day feel special and a little
more fun. Maybe you plan to stop working around four
pm to go for a run or a walk. You
could take a shorter lunch break to make that possible.
Or you could work three to five pm but take
a longer lunch break. Go have a little adventure, go

(02:35):
peru as a bookstore, take a favorite midday exercise class.
If your spouse is also working from home, have lunch together,
or if your kids are taking the bus home, you
could both stop at four and have a happy hour
drink together, especially if your weekend features a lot of
have to dos. Starting the weekend vibe on Friday during

(02:56):
the workday can make life feel a lot more in joyable.
If you have kids, your kids are probably somewhere else,
whether at school or daycare or with the sitter, so
you might actually have more flexibility for your personal fun
on Friday than you would on Saturday or Sunday. And
even if you don't have young kids, there is something

(03:17):
different about Fridays. People who travel for work are often
back on Fridays, and in the office, people who work
later Monday through Thursday often work shorter hours on Friday.
I have seen that in my time dairy studies from
casual Fridays to work from home Fridays. Many workplaces already
treat Friday as a separate matter from the usual Monday

(03:39):
to Thursday routine, So why not acknowledge that think about
what you could do to make Friday during the day
feel more like the weekend, even if you are working
a full day. If you do that, you'll have more
fun in your life the weekend will feel longer and
that is rarely a bad thing. In the meantime, this

(04:05):
is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making the
most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast

(04:33):
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.