Learn to unwind: tips and tricks to make the most of your weekends

When you're a parent, weekends are lived in a strange duality, as if our role as a parent and its demands prevent us from having real moments of relaxation. On one hand, we want to freeze time and enjoy it as much as possible, and on the other hand, we want to use it to be more productive and organized. A teacher friend told me at the beginning of the break how difficult she found it to reconcile obligations and desires. On one hand, there was a stack of papers to grade waiting for her, and on the other, the children with whom she wanted to spend quality time, not to mention getting ahead on meal prep and tidying her pantry.

My experience as a mother has made me realize that the biggest challenge is learning to manage priorities, not time. The available time will always remain the same; it's how we fill it that needs to be managed. In this sense, using our days off requires real self-work. As journalist Katrina Onstad says in her book The Weekend Effect, "the weekend is when we slow down to remember what matters." In other words, it's the time to focus on the things that are most important to us.

Unfortunately, many social constraints often make us lose sight of what's truly important and fill our weekends with new obligations. We have to take our son to hockey or swimming lessons, we have to have a clean house and an Instagrammable environment, we have to host people and offer them a culinary experience worthy of a great restaurant, or we have to visit that renowned tourist site to share our experience on social media. When we think about it "objectively," the weekend is a tiny 48-hour break in our professional lives. Unfortunately, the Friday night feeling of "finally the weekend, I can do a lot of things" is often followed by Sunday's disappointment of "it all passed too quickly and I didn't have time to check everything off my to-do list."

How to Make Your Weekend a Success

Of course, there's no magic formula for the ideal weekend. That being said, here are a few ideas that might make you reflect on how you use your free time. Take what suits you to create weekends that reflect who you are. Remember that vacation weeks, like spring break, are actually just extended weekends!

Create a festive atmosphere

Start the weekend in a celebratory mood. Friday evening and Saturday morning are special times. Add a little fantasy, some music, candles, an atmosphere that makes this moment particular and differentiates it from weekdays.

Experience the flow state

Find a hobby that will allow you to experience the flow state. The flow state "is an optimal psychological state" that occurs when you practice an activity purely for pleasure and then feel "like you're outside yourself, outside of time." Play a sport, engage in a physical or artistic activity, cook, or read, but allow yourself to please your brain! Be careful, screens and video games keep us in a flow state, they truly make us lose all sense of time, but they don't bring us any psychological benefits.

Do less cleaning

Allocate a predetermined amount of time for cleaning and stick to it. For example, reserve Sunday morning from 8 am to 10 am for cleaning the house. If you can, adhere to blogger Erin Doland's "One Day, One Room" principle. Each day of the week, spend half an hour cleaning one room instead of doing a big clean on the weekend. Don't forget to do chores as a family; it's more enjoyable, it goes faster, and it frees up family time for leisure activities.

Find here all our downloadable tools to facilitate household chore management for families!

Disconnect from your devices to connect with real humans

Disconnect your electronic devices for a 24-hour period if you feel up to it. Prioritize human connection. Call your friends instead of texting them. It's proven that human relationships can increase life expectancy, they even strengthen the immune system and can help with recovery when you're sick. Moreover, our body reacts to every notification received, releasing stress hormones when it rings.

Make plans, but not too many

Make the unexpected your friend and embrace it! Managing uncertainties and learning to live with them rather than fighting them is the best way to avoid disappointment. Admit it, the most fun evenings are those where you didn't plan to have fun. Moreover, children love last-minute plans and the surprise effect they bring.

Host people, but modestly

People aren't that complicated! Don't spend a whole day making them a meal worthy of a restaurant outing. Nowadays, people sometimes find hosting too demanding because they tend to want to do too much. The warmth of a home and the hosts' welcome are what's most important. A very simple chili to prepare is an easy meal, and you can add a touch of fantasy (like margaritas, for example!) and you're all set!

Ease up on supervising children

There's no shortage of enriching activities for children! That said, too many activities can lead to burnout in our children. Studies prove it: children who lack free time are more prone to stress or anxiety and to developing a less creative mind. Do you want to stimulate your children and wonder if you're doing too much? It's simple, if organizing your children's schedule exhausts you, it's a sign that you're doing too much and their schedule is overloaded. Don't be afraid that they'll get bored and become unpleasant, seeking arguments. Give them a chance to experience boredom and prove to you that they are creative.

Manage priorities, not time

Take the time to reflect on what is most important to you. Here, we decided to put the interests of the group before those of the individual. This way, we relieved the pressure of doing an activity that would please every family member. By managing priorities rather than time, you'll have the luxury of saying "I'm not dedicating time to that" rather than "I don't have time for that." Is having a sparkling clean house more important than spending time with grandparents? Is getting ahead on meal prep more important than getting some physical exercise? Does one frozen meal a week really have disastrous consequences for children's health?

To concretely determine your most cherished values and easily see what you spend your precious time on, fill out your value scale and complete your time budget!

Oh time, suspend your flight!

The lack of time to take care of ourselves and our families is a problem we all face. We are, in a way, victims of this endlessly flowing, lightning-fast time. So, take steps to savor it, live better, marvel, and enjoy all the simple things in life more.

And, to get practical tips and advice each month to further optimize your time management, subscribe to our monthly Family Leader newsletter and consult our various blog articles!

 

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