Most of us define ourselves by what we do, so it makes sense to define our weekends in terms of work, i.e. being away from it. But does it have to be this way? What if we made a mental adjustment, and made Thursday and Friday our “weekend”?
I suspect those two days are pretty slow in most companies anyway, so why don’t we use them as time for reflection and preparation for the following week? We can still be active at work – we are expected to be – but we can also deliberately schedule fun time for the evenings of both days.
That would leave us with Saturday and Sunday free to pursue our own passions, with all office issues confidently parked away during the work week. Fun events on Thursday and Friday evenings would also remove some of the pressure to “do it all” on Saturday and Sunday. We can then invest the best of ourselves in our own projects in the first two days of our new week.
An added bonus is that making Monday the third day of the week – and not the first – suggests to us that our own projects are more important than our employers’ (as they should be). We must never forget that our jobs are just one means of expressing who we are, and reducing their primacy in our lives – by making Mondays day 3 – may help to remind us of this.
So try making Saturday and Sunday your first two – as well as most important – work days, and see if you make any progress on that project you’ve always wanted to work on.
To your success.
