The New Corner Office: Embrace your weekends

How to relax when weekdays and weekends look similar

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the New Corner Office,
the podcast where we share strategies for thriving in the
new world of work, where location and hours are more
flexible than in the past. Today's tip is to embrace
your weekends. Yes, even now, make Saturday different from Tuesday.

(00:26):
Even if you spend your time in the same place
on Saturdays and Tuesdays, you don't need to spend your
time in the same way. There's a great scene in
the TV series Downton Abbey when a young lawyer offers
that he can visit on the weekends. An aristocratic older
lady asks, what is the weekend? With a life of leisure,
the day of the week makes no difference to her.

(00:47):
If every day is defined by pleasure and relaxation, then
your life might as well be a series of Saturdays.
But if you're listening to this podcast and aiming to
maximize your productivity, my guest is that in normal times,
you are keenly aware of week days and you get
a lot of good work done. In normal times, you
would never mistake a Sunday for a Wednesday. But these
are not normal times. For many people, it's become hard

(01:10):
to distinguish the days from each other. Now, this might
not be the case if you've got kids home with
you who are thrilled to get two days off from
their zoom classes. But if it's just you or mostly
adults in your household, it's easy to find yourself working
on Saturday and Sunday as if they were no different
from the Thursday and Friday you just worked your way through. Now.

(01:31):
I will never tell people not to work on a
weekend if you don't have a religious prohibition against it.
There's nothing inherently wrong with catching up on some tasks
on a Saturday, or as I'm doing right now, writing
podcast scripts at seven am on Sunday. But for most
people to be able to work remotely sustainably, it's helpful
to maintain some sort of weekly rhythm. To be at

(01:54):
our best, we need times to rest and recharge. Over
the longer term, will probably get more done if you're
not working a normal work schedule seven days a week.
To keep work from taking over your weekend, you need
to do two things. First. If you find yourself board,
find something non work related to do. Yes. This is

(02:16):
more challenging if you live in a place where leaving
the house is still problematic, but it is still possible.
Remind yourself of your leisure options. Go for a walk,
call a friend, get absorbed in a good book or
in practicing music, fire up the grill and experiment. Don't
think of this as frittering away time you could be working. Instead,

(02:39):
think of it as cross training. Athletes often devote time
to complementary sports. A runner might bike two days a
week to maintain a robic capacity while minimizing wear and tear. Likewise,
as you putter in your garden, you might think of
some design concepts to incorporate in your work. Effort Ful

(02:59):
fun if seldom wasted. Second, if you do need to
work over the weekend, or if you'd like to invest
time in a bigger professional project, set some time aside
specifically for that. I'm working from five thirty a m.
To eight thirty a m. On Sunday morning, so the
rest of the day is open. If you don't have
young kids, you probably don't need to get up that early.

(03:21):
But if you know that you'll work from four to
eight p m. On Sunday, then you can resist the
urge to check email the rest of the weekend. There's
a time for work and it's not. Now you'll be
more focused and efficient and feel more relaxed. Of course,
part of making weekends special is not treating week days
like weekends. I probably don't have to tell you this,

(03:43):
but you're best off creating a challenging but doable to
do list for Tuesday, Wednesday and the rest and knocking
those items out. If you spend the day surfing the
web or organizing the pantry, then you'll feel behind and
feel like you need to work all of Saturday, and
the psyche gets messy. Building a weekly schedule with time
for work and time for everything else makes success and

(04:07):
personal fulfillment possible, and that sounds good to me any
day of the week. In the meantime, this is Laura,
Thanks for listening, and here's to succeeding in the New
Corner Office. The New Corner Office is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, visit the I Heart

(04:29):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
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