The weekend is the time you can catch up on work, right? Clients aren’t calling, so you can just put your head down and get something actually accomplished, right? Okay, so you’ll go to your kid’s soccer game, but since nothing is more boring than 6-year-olds bumbling around the field, you’ll catch up on your email during that. Excellent way to be productive.
Well, I’m challenging you this weekend to put the smartphone in your pocket and talk to the person next to you at the game instead of doing email (it’s still boring, and no one will score anyway). Here are 10 reasons you should truly leave work behind this weekend.
1. Your brain needs a break.
Growing up, I read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books from cover to cover about 8 thousand times (not exaggerating at all here). One thing that fascinated me was the description of Sundays. Pa, as a child, wasn’t allowed to do anything other than sit. Laura could sometimes play with paper dolls, but only if they were already cut. Crazy, I thought, but now, I think maybe they were onto something. Their work was heavily physical. Sitting on your behind one day a week gave you a much-needed break. Our work is almost exclusively brain oriented. Just like Pa needed to rest those muscles, we need to rest our brains to have proper function the rest of the week.
To keep reading, click here: 10 Reasons You Should Absolutely Not Work This Weekend
Thank you for giving us permission to have a balance between work and home:) I have been really working on this myself lately, as well, I am trying to teach it to staff. I keep reminding them (and myself) that in 20 years, this job probably won’t be here, but your family, spouse, kids, and health will be. It’s up to each of us to decide how we want those things to be in 20 years!
“Their work was heavily physical. Sitting on your behind one day a week gave you a much-needed break. Our work is almost exclusively brain oriented.”
Yes! This is why I try to fill my weekend with outdoorsy stuff such as hiking, camping, etc. After being cooped up all day, every weekday, I do feel the need to get out of the urban and into the “wild.”
And, even if physically exhausted from the long weekend hike or backpacking trip, I still feel recharged for the coming work week.
Now, I do wish that I had this article to print out and give to my last boss – the one who considered you lazy if you didn’t work weekends! There is the reason he is a former boss.