Looking forward to your day off of work is lovely when you have something fun planned or when you know you get to have a relaxing day to yourself. However, sometimes the excitement of having the day off can get clouded by all the chores that need to get done and a hefty to-do list. When your day off turns into errands, exercising and meal prepping, it can still be rejuvenating but may hold its own stresses when you want to relax instead. We all wish there were more hours in the day and it can be frustrating to find the best course of action for what you need to get done and what can wait.
Sometimes having so much on your to-do list can make it hard to do much of anything when you don’t know where to start or if you’re drained from the week. You might be trying to juggle laundry, cooking, seeing friends, getting vitamin D, working out while tending to your plants and catching up on phone calls and texts. It can be a lot to balance and you don’t want to forget time for yourself. Your weekends or days off should not add another layer of stress to your life and mental load, but that often happens with life and expectations. Not to mention social media can also take up our time responding to comments, memes, messages and consuming content.
When it comes to managing your time on your day off, it might be hard to build a routine or to want to have structure since it is your day off, but planning times to be productive and get some things done can also help you plan ahead to ensure you get some time for yourself. Having a loose structure to your day can help give you some direction.
It’s also important to listen to your body- If you scheduled an early morning workout on your day off but you’re finding you need more sleep when your alarm goes off, it’s ok to snooze sometimes or change your workout to later in the day so you can sleep in occasionally. If you had originally planned to run errands but then decide you need a slow morning, you can toss some laundry in the washer before turning on the TV or reaching for your book, so that way you are still making some progress while getting to relax, too!
When life gets hectic there can be a vast false sense of urgency. While this false urgency may be most prevalent in sifting through work emails or texts, it can still pop up on your own time. Being overwhelmed can generate a sense of slight panic or a mental block that hinders productivity by highlighting some things as priorities that might not be the most important or “urgent” thing at that moment. You might be tackling so many things at once that your day doesn’t allow you to pause and prioritize your list or think about time constructs to help organize your day.
It can really help to block out certain times for various tasks and also block out certain distractions. A lot of this false urgency ideation is derived from people-pleasing tendencies that you might hold and the need to help others. While consideration is admirable, you must remember to consider yourself. Don’t let this momentary panic from false urgency cause you to throw off your ‘You’ Day, whether you’re tending to appointments and errands or doing self-care. If the panic starts to set in, you can take a few deep breaths to help you recenter in your day or try jotting down the tasks you want to highlight for the day in your phone notes.
While you don’t want to leave your friends on “read,” it can be distracting if you are working on chores or a project and you keep pausing to respond to texts or DMs. It might save you time if you turn your phone on silent until you’ve completed the task you want to focus on and then sit down to put your feet up and respond to messages afterward. On the other hand, though, friendships and your support system are truly important and you don’t want to get so focused on being productive that you let these friendships falter. A great metaphor that can be helpful in assuming a hierarchy of prioritization for your day off is the ‘Glass vs. rubber’ concept.
The ‘Glass vs. rubber’ concept is the idea that everything in your life is either glass or rubber – things that are rubber will bounce when you drop them or let them slip while things that are glass will shatter. For example, if you leave the dishes in the sink for a few days, you’ll just bounce right back and do them when you make time (they’re not going anywhere), but if you forget to water your plants they will die. The glass vs rubber scenarios are especially helpful in prioritizing relationships with others and yourself. If you skip an evening workout to go to a friend’s birthday dinner, you’ll bounce right back next time you’re at the gym. Whereas, if you decide to skip the birthday function, you could hurt your friendship. Things like yard work, cleaning the house, and organizing can always wait, while we’ll never know how much time we have to call our folks back.
Putting off chores to help a friend who’s struggling or volunteering on a Saturday morning are two other great examples of putting a pause on things that will bounce back to prevent things from shattering. Also, it can be beneficial to take a social media break on your day off. We all love rotting and doom scrolling, but to really help you combat the to-do list, saying goodbye to socials will help put you in a focus fortress.
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