When you work for yourself taking any time off is challenging. When you’re a travel writer, even your vacations error more on the work side. If you want to stay afloat, you inevitably have to work a few hours on weekends to allow you that flexibility during the week. Still, everyone needs downtime, which is why I’ve learned some purposeful techniques on how to have better weekends.
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Better weekends don’t happen spontaneously. Like the adage: failing to plan is planning to fail. Reading Laura Vanderkam’s book: I Know How She Does It, has helped me put perspective on how I use my time and how to better employ it.
Better Weekends
Better weekends start with examining your schedule and being realistic about what needs to happen. For me, my daughter was starting school, so one would think I’d get 6-hours a day to myself.
Reality is, she didn’t start school until a Tuesday and the following Monday was Labour Day. Two weeks from now she has another day off for “goal setting”, plus every Friday is a half day at her school.
These first two weeks I had three and a half days to myself to work, but that only amounted to 21 hours. Considering I had been gone much of the summer and had several non-work appointments to fit in (dentist, chiropractor, hairdresser, etc…), it was apparent I needed to nab some extra time somewhere. Enter the weekend.
Working on weekends
I know it’s not sexy to work on weekends, but it works for me. My husband is home and can help with childcare. He can even cook (and clean up!) a meal or two. The trick is not to work the entire weekend, because everybody needs a break. But in North America, we have a lot of leisure time. We have a lot more time than we think, actually.
Take last weekend for example. We were out in Canmore where we have a condo. I really like trying out new recipes, so I packed a few cookbooks and ingredients I don’t normally keep on hand out there. I also loaded up on my favourite travel magazines, so I’d be pumped to start writing after reading these well crafted articles.
Eve’s friend came over for a play date, The Huz was keen to putter around the house and I excused myself to pound out some prose.
I ended up working a little under four hours, split up into three shifts. (This is equivalent to an average work day for me when I go to the gym.) While I could categorize this as I work day, I also had a lot of time (10 more waking hours!) for fun stuff.
I spent two hours at the pool with my daughter. I went for a long dog walk. I made soup from scratch and tried out a new recipe for quinoa granola. We watched a family movie together and I read my daughter a chapter of Pride and Prejudice (the abridge version).
And because I tracked my time, I could tell I frittered away a total of 45 minutes doing not much of anything at all.
The next day, I didn’t work quite as long, but I still logged just under three hours. Instead of driving to the coffee shop where I like to work, I rode my bike there and back, which counted as a workout. I also managed to get a grocery trip in, had quiet time with Eve, spend 45-minutes doing fun shopping by myself and made it to hot yoga.
I could look at that weekend and see that I worked several hours every day. Or I could choose to look at how I spent my time differently. Yes, I worked, but there was also a lot of me time, family time, exercise time and household tasks fit in.
Reframing how you balance your time
When I rethink my weekends and lose the social perception of what they should or shouldn’t be, I’m better balanced. I’m more set up for the week ahead and if something arises – like a volunteer opportunity at Eve’s school, I know I can take advantage of these flex hours and make up the time later.
Certainly, my goal is to get everything done that I need to during the week. An ideal situation would be taking the entire weekend off. I now accept that’s going to be the exception more than the rule and I think I’ve finally come to terms with that.
How do you feel about working weekends? Do you have any tips to make it seem less onerous?
I agree that sometimes fitting some work into the weekend is helpful. As my kids are now teen they are often doing homework or their own thing so I don’t feel guilty. I am going to steal your idea of tracking your time- think that will help me during the week as well. I am also going o check out that book. Thanks!
I work on weekends too. Hell its what I am supposed to be doing right now as I hide behdind my lap top.