How to work on weekends without loosing your soul and your friends

When you are a freelancer, an entrepreneur, a visionary or just a guy who aspires stuff, chances are, you are consequently working on weekends. Bill Watterson, comic artist of “Calvin and Hobbes” back in the 80's said:

"Weekends do not count unless you spend them 

doing something completely pointless."

Relaxing happens when you do things, without expecting a certain outcome. Relaxing will get your creative juices flowing. You will rarely have world changing ideas while sitting on your desk. You might have them while drinking with your friends, traveling, running or smoking a cigarette. I’m talking about moments that allow you to shut down the noise in your head. Moments that enable you to stop your thoughts from running through your brain like trains through a railway station. We often underestimate the importance of these moments.

Gertrude Stein once said:

"It takes a lot of time to be a genius. 

You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing."

When is the last time you were on a bus stop and didn’t check out your mails or poke some people on facebook? When is the last time you just did nothing?

If you are like me and can’t answer this question with ease, you are definitely not taking enough breaks.

The “great it’s Sunday” Fallacy

Let’s see if the following situation sounds familiar to you. You wake up and think, “ohhh great! I will just answer some mails and finish this website`s footer before I take the dog for a walk”. You start your computer, write some mails, open your browser…
…
… suddenly two hours have passed. It feels like you leapt through time. Instead of focusing on the important stuff like getting those mails done and finishing the footer of the website as you initially intended, you ended up browsing on facebook, twitter and other channels instead.

What happened? You lost focus.

Keeping focus: The 1 charge cycle

Try this: on Friday evening, charge your battery to 100%. Your job is to survive the weekend with this fully charged battery. If you have an old laptop, bargain yourself some time and get a new one.

What’s the result? In limiting your time, you will be more focused and you will have to work much more efficiently. This approach forces you to focus on the essence. You will automatically prioritize your tasks and you won’t be a victim of the “I’m coming honey! Be there in 1 minute” - Phenomena.

Unfortunately I don’t have a solution for Desktop owners yet but feel free to share your ideas.

Let me know if it works for you

Source: medium.com