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Benjamin Spall, author of the online publication My Morning Routine, has been interviewing about 300 of the richest and most successful people in the world for five years to gather information about their habits. He summarized his observations and came to the conclusion that most successful personalities do the following things on weekends.
Both your body and your brain won't work properly if you don't give them the proper rest. As the statistics showed Interview Statistics / My Morning Routine , productive people sleep an average of seven hours and 29 minutes a day. Tim Cook, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey and Jeff Bezos confirm that this is how much time they devote to sleep per day.
Of course, it is not always possible to sleep that much. Especially if you have a lot of work and you have to stay up late. Therefore, when you notice that you are not getting enough sleep, use the weekend to catch up.
But this does not mean that you can sleep five or even four hours on weekdays, and spend the whole day in bed on weekends. So you will only bring down your circadian rhythms.
Do you feel uncomfortable because you don't spend enough time with your loved ones? Working from Monday to Friday often prevents us from fully enjoying the company of those who are dear. So the weekend should be devoted to the family: joint training with your spouse or a trip with children to the park bring you closer.
On weekends, the babysitter comes to us, and my wife Tiff and I go to work out together on Saturday morning. Then we spend the whole weekend together: we put the kids to bed together, we have dinner together. We try to live a normal life.
However, if you still have some work for the weekend, try to get rid of it on Saturday morning. And then thoughts about her will not distract you from your family until the end of the holiday.
Successful people always develop a strategy for the coming week — so they get an advantage in advance and do not waste time on Monday. You can kill half of Sunday to make to-do lists, or in just 10 minutes you can add the planned events of the week to the calendar. The main thing is that on Monday you are already ready and do not think about what you should do.
On Saturday I break down and go hiking on foot. And I have Sunday set aside for reflection, feedback, strategy development and preparation for next week.
Planning a work week is, of course, useful, but you also need to rest. Successful people try to relax and gain strength on Saturday and Sunday to get to work with renewed vigor. Many people prefer to have a leisurely breakfast, and then sit on the couch with their favorite book, do meditation or work out.
On Saturdays, Richard Branson, for example, hangs out at parties. And on Sundays he does cliff jumping, kayaking and boat racing.
Playing bridge is a pretty old—fashioned pastime, but I like it. On weekends, I watch my daughter ride a horse. It's also old-fashioned, but interesting. And every night I wash the dishes. Washing dishes irritates other people, but I, on the contrary, like this activity.
Housework, as Gates pointed out, is an annoying and boring routine. But it needs to be dealt with somehow, and part of the weekend should be devoted to grocery shopping, laundry and household budget planning.
The main thing is to prioritize doing housework. Something can be done on weekdays, cutting out 15 minutes before going to bed. And on the weekend, set aside an hour or two to deal with those household chores that take up the most time and attention. For example, with weekly cleaning. After completing routine tasks, you will be able to breathe freely and rest with a clear conscience.
To be alone for a while and reflect is very useful. This helps in achieving goals. Successful people use weekends to think about what is important to them, find solutions to the problems that bother them, and figure out how to strengthen their skills and increase productivity.
Research G. Di Stefano, F. Gino, G. P. Pisano, B. R. Staats. Making Experience Count: The Role of Reflection in Individual Learning / Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper , conducted at Harvard, demonstrated that students who spent 15 minutes at the end of the day making sense of the material they passed, show better results compared to those who do not.
Self-reflection in small doses allows you to become happier and more productive. And definitely worth giving her a little time at least on the weekend. This way you can better understand what you already have and where to move on.
