Eleven ways to have a better weekend

Do you spend your weekends rushing around running errands, answering work emails, ferrying kids back and forth between activities as well as trying to squeeze in time to catch up with friends and loved ones? With so many demands placed on those forty-eight hours, weekends can often feel as busy as the working week, with no space to tune out and recharge.

Tired of suffering from Sunday-night let down, award-winning journalist Katrina Onstad pushes back against the need to be ‘on’ 24/7. Filled with personal and professional inspiration, her new book The Weekend Effect: The Life-Changing Benefits Of Taking Two Days Off reveals that taking back the weekend is the key to increasing joy, creativity, productivity and success.

Here she shares her manifesto and top tips for having a good weekend:

1. Connect. Do this in person: An old friend. A new one. A neighbour. A neglected relative. Extend yourself.
2. Care. Offer your time. Volunteer. Become an activist for a cause you believe in. Write angry letter to someone in government. Go hang out with a group of people who care about something more than you do and let it rub off.
3.  Play. For every passive activity, do two active ones.
4.  Go green. Define nature any way you choose. Get close to it. Return to that place every few weekends until it’s sacred ground.
5. Seek beauty. Expose yourself to art that takes your breath away. Make something with your hands. Stand outside a church on a Sunday morning and listen to the choir. Join the choir.
6. Do less. Less shopping. Less cleaning. Less decluttering (this does not mean more cluttering!). Less hovering over the kids.
7. Don’t makes plans, make space.
8. Wander.
9. Wonder.
10. Be.
11. Repeat next weekend.