For people whose work-life is as clear cut as a 9 to 5, Monday to Friday routine, the weekend represents two days when work can be forgotten and there’s time to enjoy doing fun things with friends and family. For those of us who work from home in some way or another, the lines are a bit more blurred, and this can lead to weekends that fly past. So what can you do to make sure your weekends last longer and are more memorable?
Firstly, why are weekends so important? Home workers can end up doing long hours to get the job done, and research has found that after a 55 hour working week, productivity at the weekend drops to nothing at all. So instead of trying to get more work done, focus on having fun and creating memories, which has been shown to improve productivity by 12%, giving you a weekend to remember and the energy to make your working week more effective too.
The good news is that there are science-backed ways for making your weekend last longer and they are easily attainable. The first is something that home workers like to think our jobs allow us to do, which is to be spontaneous, but how often is that really the case? So at weekend, actually do it, because our brains store more details of new and surprising memories, helping to make the experience feel like it lasted longer than it did.
Another important tip is to something that might feel scary for someone who is normally connected to technology all the time to stay in touch with clients or remote colleagues, and that’s to switch off from your phone and emails. The effect of this 24/7 connection to work and social media is that we feel hurried, so switching off from it all for the weekend can help time to slow down and move at a more serene pace.
Weekends need to be about entertainment, letting go of stress and enjoying the fruits of the week’s labors, so some of the best ways to make it feel like you’ve got the most out of it is to pick the right kind of enjoyment. For example, if Saturday night is movie night, picking a scary film will help your brain make more memories as a reaction to you being scared, while sitting and listening to an album all the way through puts your brain in a zen-like trance, making time feel like it’s lasting longer.
These are just a few of the tips that can help you enjoy a weekend that doesn’t fly by in a blur and leaves you with happy memories that will power you into the working week ready to achieve great things.
