With shades of burnout creeping up, Kelly Bertrand realises that she needs to be making the most of her quiet weekends. But, as she’s discovered, the secret actually lies in the work week.
I love the idea of a quiet weekend. Coffee in bed, perhaps a stroll around the neighbourhood on the way to brunch, perhaps a visit to the local shops to pick up some tulips and artisanal cheese (ok yes I’ve romanticised the quiet weekend, sue me). After five days of full-on chaos, it’s the least I can do for my worn-out brain and creaking body.
But why, try as I might, can’t I do it!?
Because, according to the experts, we’re trying too hard to ‘live for the weekend’ to compensate for the insane amounts of mental load, cortisol-spiking urgency overload and the constant, never-ending hamster wheel of ‘making it work’ at home, at work and everywhere else.
Our weeks are full of responsibilities, so we try our best to smush in as much joy as we can on a Saturday (read: wine) and the result is a hung-over, low-energy Sunday that simultaneously sees us cram in all our life admin AND deal with the Sunday Scaries at the same time.
Rinse, repeat.
While I have the best job in the world (I think), I can’t help but feel the edges of burnout starting to creep up. Maybe it’s the time of the year, maybe it’s because hey, running a business is tough (who knew!) and maybe because it’s something completely unrelated. But after reading this story on this very topic, the notion of the quiet weekend has resonated with me like nothing else.
In the yarn, Jill Cotton, a career-trends expert, says that the key to a quiet weekend – a proper, unromanticised and effective quiet weekend – is actually something I’ve been doing for years: front-loading work to create space for a more chill end of the week.
She says, “For those with a traditional Monday-to-Friday schedule, this often means clearing Fridays of long meetings, hard deadlines, highly collaborative activities or tasks that can’t be completed in a day. And for those with the flexibility to work from home, Fridays are a popular choice as they begin to wind down for the weekend.”
I’m a pretty type-A person and organisation – tabs, folders, lists – is my vibe, and I structure my week exactly as Jill describes. Monday is for heavy-hitting meetings, strategy, collaborative work, Tuesday is my biggest project day, Wednesdays are my preferred client meeting time and Thursdays are a little bit of everything. By Friday, ideally, I’ve done everything that requires huge amounts of brain power, and I’ll focus on more creative of forward-thinking endeavours. Capsule even has a ‘dark comms’ policy – from 12pm on a Friday, we’re all offline with no expectation of returning messages or replying to emails. This gives us freedom to focus on whatever we need to, or else enjoy some downtime.
But while that all sounds LOVELY, for the last few months I feel like I’ve been more in a ‘winging it’ kind of vibe, and I tell ya what, it’s just not working for me.
So, off the back of the ‘quiet weekend’ theory, here’s my new gameplan:
- Theming my workdays – actually making a concentrated effort to funnel tasks into their themed day when I can (obviously shit happens) so my brain is less muddled as to what needs to happen on what day. It means I’ll be putting myself into a position to actually enjoy my weekends by maximising my productivity during the week, allowing me to actually switch off and not think about work.
- Friday afternoon wind downs – just like how you save the good part of your differ until the end, I’ll save my favourite tasks for Fridays when I can vibe out while I’m doing them – candles on, favourite play list humming and hell, I work from home, a 3pm rosé when I feel like it.
- Romanticising my weekends – I know I joked about this at the beginning of the story, but I think it’s time to re-frame my weekends so I have proper leisure time. For me it’ll be Sunday late afternoons – henceforth, will be my personal sacred time. No catch-ups, no life admin, no responsibilities. Maybe some sport on the telly or a good book and some snacks with low lighting, the record player on and the to-do list done. Will this happen every Sunday? Hell no. Am I in the position where I don’t have kids to look after? Yes. Can I try my best to carve out these two-ish hours for myself every week? Hell yes.
I’ll let you know how it goes – and email me on kelly@capsulenz.com if you have any advice or thoughts!