How to relax if your weekend is short

Weekends are great, but for various reasons, people can wind up with short ones. Maybe you’ve got a side hustle or you’re taking weekend classes. Maybe your days off just don’t happen consecutively. Or maybe your job is going through a particularly busy season.

Even if you love your job, that doesn’t change your need for downtime. Fortunately, even if you need (or want) to work long hours, some strategies can make your short weekends still feel relaxing.

Set working hours

First, try to concentrate your work. You’re better off working a solid 8 hours on one weekend day than flitting in and out of work all weekend. If you need to split the time, maybe do 4 hours on Saturday morning and 4 hours Sunday night.

The point is to, if at all possible, designate a reasonable stretch of time that is officially “not work.” If you work from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, then 3 p.m. Saturday to 7 a.m. Monday could be off. That’s 40 hours! If you work from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturday, and 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Sunday night, then you’ve got 11 a.m. Saturday to 6 p.m. Sunday off — which is a 31-hour stretch. It might not be expansive, but it’s not zero time — which is worth acknowledging.

Next, actually think through your time off. If you have limited leisure time, then your leisure time is too precious to be totally leisurely about leisure. I’m not saying you have to schedule every minute (no doubt you deal with that enough at work). But go into your 31- (or 40-) hour stretch, with, say, three ideas of things that would add to your energy levels. Maybe one could happen the first evening, one the next day, and one the next afternoon. Nothing crazy, but something to make the time feel rich and full.

Your weekend portfolio

One study of people’s experienced moods found that physical, social, and spiritual activities tended to score quite high on the happiness scale. While you might not hit all of those in a 31-hour weekend, you could certainly try. Get together with another family for a casual dinner on Saturday night, go to worship services on Sunday morning, and a bike ride Sunday afternoon and you’re good. Or perhaps you go to a transporting concert on Saturday night (awe in any form counts as spiritual!), and run on Sunday morning with a friend.

I think it’s also good to have an idea of what you’ll do during your non-scheduled downtime so you don’t mindlessly reconnect with the office. If you’ve only got one day off, you probably don’t need to plug in during this time. A good book might be a better idea.

And finally, just as with any other weekend, you want to compress the chores and errands. There’s always stuff you have to do, but if you’ve only got one day off you don’t want to spend all of it battling mall traffic. Set a small window. If it doesn’t happen during this time, it probably wasn’t that important. Use your limited downtime for something more meaningful — or fun.

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