Suddenly that phone of yours starts buzzing; you ignore it with a tight-lipped, worried smile. It vibrates again and beads of sweat pour over your forehead. Your family, or maybe your friends, start looking at you all accusatory. You and them know what this is about; you just can’t bring yourself to admit it.
Finally, you hesitantly pluck up your courage to open the dozens work emails you received in the last minute or so, Knowing that now you are branded a workaholic, whose very existence has become a black hole sucking all the fun out of the hangout, AGAIN!
Vacation Guilt: Busy is not a badge of honor
Deep down inside, you want to unplug from work and enjoy your weekend, but we are a generation that was raised to look up to people like Steve Jobs who sacrificed their whole life in the name of achieving their “dreams.” But you don’t want to end up like this guy.
So the dream narrative prevails, with a pang of intrinsic guilt against time off and vacations.
The vacation guilt phenomenon is about the raging war that takes hold of you once a few off-days are on the horizon. Theoretically, you know you should disconnect and the benefits of some work/life balance are not lost on you. However, practically, the burden of the “vacation guilt” is holding you back. This “vacation guilt is the nagging urge to cancel or delay a vacation due to a self-imposed work-related guilt.”
- You procrastinate on the workweek and your guilt drives you to overcompensate for that on the weekend.
- You’re a member of Workaholics Anonymous. You just feel compelled to work because of this internal pressure and persistent thoughts about how a few days off might derail your career.
- You start perceiving your work as more than a social contribution; it’s now vital to your financial status as well as your mental health. You treat your job as if it is your identity, and your work is now tied to your sense of self-worth and your significance in the world.
The vacation mindset: Hacking your rest state
Just because the vacation guilt exists doesn’t mean that there is no way out of it. As the title suggests, this article is mainly focused on weekends; yet I keep using the word “vacation.” It’s basically because I want to enlist this vacation mindset. Your weekend should be a restorative experience just like your longer vacations.
In a study published by HBR, the team wanted to test out if being more aware of how you approach your weekends and your mindset towards them in general would actually affect the enjoyment levels of the employees.
They gathered a pool of employees and divided them into two groups telling one group to treat/approach their weekends as a vacation and the other group were simply told to treat their weekends like they normally would. This seemingly minor change affected the results noticeably. The participants who were asked to treat their weekends like a vacation were significantly happier than the ones who didn’t.
Digging deeper into this, the researchers realized that it wasn’t the scope of chores made the difference between the two groups; rather, it was the very fact of thinking like a “vacationer.” Having this mindset made the participants more mindful and attentive to their weekend activities and the fact that it’s a weekend.
So how exactly to do that? This study asks you to bring your awareness to the concept of time-off, pushing things to the weekend is not an option anymore when you are prompted to actually take that time off and disconnect.
Hacks on how to disconnect during the weekend
1- Make the right plan for the weekend
You might think that making plans for weekends is an absurd idea, since weekends should be free and spontaneous. But planning for the weekend ahead is not about hindering your freedom or spontaneity; it’s just about putting things into perspective.
This doesn’t need to be a rigid or strict schedule. Think of it more as a sort of reference.
How to do it?
“Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another,” says the French Poet Anatole France. Your plan here is not about schedules and restricting yourself to one thing or another; it’s simply adopting another form of labor. Be it exercise or a creative hobby, just deciding to make your weekend about a different kind of effort and flexing a muscle that your work doesn’t usually let you flex.
For maximum effectiveness, try this:
There is no right or wrong way to plan; make it as loose or as tight as you want to. But just like vacations, weekends need some sort of guidance. Feeling productive during the weekend will help you charge your energy for the next week. The key is not to try to impose excessive control over yourself since the weekend is all about relaxation and fun.
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- Listen to your body: Wake up and see how the day feels to you? Do you feel like consuming or creating? Do you feel like physical exercise or human bonding time? Put a theme for your day and go with your gut, but stay away from Netflix!
- Schedule what you want to do, not just what you have to do: A good way to determine this is to see your tasks under the 3 major categories: Career, Relationships, Self-development (includes exercise, hobbies, … etc)
For example, if you feel like consuming more today, you can consume more by reading an article on self-development, or watching a documentary that has some insightful information about your career, or listening to a friend talk about the last book they read. All of this is what your body wanted to do but you simply sought it out in different forms to keep it balanced.
2- Plan 3 to 5 anchor events on the weekend
You have 60 hours between 6 PM Thursday till 6 AM Sunday. If you decide to sleep a full day (24 hours), you will still have 36 hours left. You need to plan for 3 to 5 anchor events to take place during that time.
First, let’s get some misconceptions out of the way:
- Weekends are not about unplugging from life; they are only about unplugging from work.
- Rest is not about doing nothing; it’s about recharging your mental, emotional and physical energy.
How to do it?
To make full use of the 36 hours left for your anchor events, use a template called “List of 100 Dreams.” This is an unedited list of anything one might want to do, have, or spend more time on in life. Consider it a list of everyday fun activities, more along the lines of a bucket list of activities within a 2 hour radius from your house.
For maximum effectiveness, try this:
- Your anchor is there to make you excited for the weekend. Make sure you choose an anchor that always drives anticipation, excitement, and pleasure.
- Link each of these 100 activities to the major weekend anchor spots:
- Thursday evening/night
- Friday morning/noon
- Friday evening/night
- Saturday morning/noon
- Saturday evening
Create rituals. Pick a special weekend activity that always drives you joy and make a habit out of it. Comforting collective rituals boost happiness and over time become traditions.
3- Tackling the three challenges of the weekend: Chores, children, and office work
I am not totally delusional to just leave you with all these happy-go-lucky tips without addressing the hurdling blocks that you will surely be meeting. Hurdling blocks are tricky and unpredictable, so this will be a general guideline for whenever things are running smoothly. But when a special event or a heavy workload arises, try to adapt to keep the “vacation” mindset alive.
How to do it?
So if you choose to believe the quote on top, your housework can kill you if you do it right, let’s try to “do it smart.”
- Chores: break down your chores to small time slots and try to finish them throughout your weekdays. Never sacrifice prime weekend anchor events to chores.
- Children: Narrow down your choices to the activities you can all enjoy. Try and schedule your activities along with theirs. Make this a collectively pleasant experience so that it won’t feel like a chore.
- Office work: Keep it tight. See if you want to compress professional work into a small time-frame on weekends such as Saturday mid-morning or noon. Other than that try to stay totally away from work.
For maximum effectiveness, try this:
Chores: breakdown dull chores into 15-minute chunks; try to do them a little bit of this and a little bit of that on your weekdays. Then schedule only 2 or 3 hours on your weekend to do the bulk of it.
Children: Try and get a small workout whenever you take your kids to theirs. Or try reading your books when you have to spend an hour outside their gymnastics class. When you are with your family, try to do a mini digital detox where you all detach from all electronic devices. Make it fun and turn it into a game.
Office work: If you absolutely have to work on the weekend, I recommend unplugging your laptop from its charger. I personally tried this and it made all the difference in the world. Take your laptop to a place in your house that you rarely use or sit in. This will give you about 2 to 3 hours of battery power and a fresh environment that would strategically add a feeling of newness that will slightly offset the dull work routine. Limit your work to those 3 hours of battery power and try a new place each time.
4- Do Nothing
An article published by nature.com explores the brain research done on the importance of downtime and doing nothing. From the reviewed research we can conclude that
- In a resting “do nothing” state, the brain is not doing nothing. It is completing the unconscious tasks of integrating and processing conscious experiences.
- Resting state helps you process experiences, consolidate memories, reinforce learning, and regulate attention and emotions, and keeps you productive and effective in areas of work and judgments.
How to do it?
Reflection, meditation and alone time are all essential to your recharging journey. Remember that all of this is to rejuvenate your emotional, mental and physical health. This is not about outcomes, this is about your intrinsic balance and wellbeing. To get started you need to understand that:
- There are various types of meditation: transcendental meditation, mindful meditation, breath awareness meditation, Zen meditation, among others. Explore them all to find what better suits you, your body and your needs.
- Reflection is the ability to think back, observe yourself in action and think from it. So the time you spend doing nothing is not time wasted; it’s a practice to keep the balance between action and reflection.
For maximum effectiveness, try this:
- Try these 3 steps to improve your self-reflection:
- Reflect on your experience
- What happened? (action)
- What you thought or felt at the time? (reaction)
- Reflect on your learning. Analyze your experience and measure it up to the values and principles you choose to follow
• What does this experience say to me?
• What can I learn?
Apply. Apply what you learned and put it to practice.
• What options do I see for the next time I encounter this situation?
• What specifically do I intend to do based on my reflection?
Let’s put it this way: a work-free weekend is the equivalent of a healthy meal; you know you should do it. All studies show how much benefits you can reap from it but you decide to cheat; after all, junk food is a weakness.
One last Actionable hack:
- Make sure to conquer the Saturday blues by always ending your weekend on a good note. This will help start your week off on a good note.
Ready to start the weekend? Which tip are you excited to try right away?
