As you already know, I’ve been trying to be more intentional with my time during the work week, in order to avoid having to work for a large chunk of the weekend. Admittedly, I haven’t quite mastered this concept quite yet. But, I’m working on it—I promise!

While I haven’t been able to completely eliminate work from my weekends, I have been able to significantly cut down on the amount I have to do. It’s not perfect, but it’s something! So, here are a few real strategies I’ve used to kick my work week productivity into high gear and save (most of) my weekend for straight up relaxation!

STRATEGIES TO TAKE YOUR WEEKENDS BACK

1. ASSIGN TIME ESTIMATES TO YOUR TO-DO LIST.

This is something I recently started doing after completing my to-do list, and it’s really helped me a lot. Once my whole list of tasks for the day is jotted down, I go through and write a time estimate next to each item. How long do I think each to-do will take me? Not only does this help me to easily see whether or not I’m being realistic with my workload, but it’s also super motivating. If I know something typically takes me 20 minutes yet it ended up taking me an hour, I know I’m not maximizing my work time as much as I could. It’s time to buckle down and focus!

2. MAKE A LIST.

Yes, I usually have my standard daily to-do list. But, I started to realize there was an issue with those. What’s that? Well, I have quite a few articles and assignments that need to be ready to go live on Monday mornings. However, they never made it onto my to-do lists during the week prior. So, that meant I was scrambling on Saturday or Sunday to get those things done.

Now, typically on Tuesdays, I create what I call a “weekend list”. That’s a list of all of the items that I usually take care of over the weekend. That allows me to get a quick glimpse at all of those assignments, and work them into my to-do list over the week—avoiding that mad dash on the weekend!

3. STOP WASTING TIME.

Well, duh, right? But, you and I both know cutting out the distractions and getting down to business isn’t always as easy as we’d like to think.

Luckily, I’ve found one really helpful method in making the most of the time I have: I removed social networks from my bookmarks bar. Yes, it can be a little inconvenient when I need to legitimately promote something on a platform. But, it’s really cut down on the amount of times I mindlessly open a new browser tab and scroll through Facebook, because I have to physically type in the URL—it puts more thought into the process. Give it a try!

4. BE REALISTIC.

I tend to be a little too optimistic and far-reaching with my goals and aspirations. Not only do I want to wrap up a few articles over the weekend, but I also want to clean up my Pinterest boards, work ahead for Monday, and rebrand my entire business.

While it’s good to be ambitious, that much pressure pretty much guarantees a one-way ticket to Burnoutville. So, recognize when you’ve put in a good day’s (or week’s!) work, and call it quits. There’s always tomorrow.

Do you work on the weekends? What do you do during the week to make sure you get the weekends off?

Until next time!