Building a restful weekend can be tricky in a culture that moves too fast-paced and has little understanding of the desire to slow down. We have lost the art of building downtime on weekends that fill us up and bring us energy for the week ahead.
When I began changing what my weekends looked like, I had to rethink several things. Here is a list of questions and prompts that I have found helpful to help you build a weekend that works for you.
Questions / Prompts
I highly encourage you to grab a journal, open the notes app on your phone, or write a quick list on a piece of paper. Spend a few minutes pondering these prompts. You are the only one who understands all the nuanced parts of your life and the many directions you are being pulled. You alone can come up with solutions that will work for you.
Trust your intuition and try something new that you discover in this post.
Check out my Instagram so you can see all the ideas for each category. (They are also on my TikTok) I have discovered the joy of creating visual “ask my friend” quizzes. These remind me of the teen magazine quizzes that I loved and I find them very helpful when brainstorming.
Personality –
- Are you introverted/extroverted?
- What types of activities do you enjoy doing?
Lifestyle –
- What you do during the week affects your time on the weekends.
- How do you spend your days?
- What do you need more of?
- What is lacking?
Season of Life –
- Do you have small kids or a demanding job (or both)?
- Are you exceptionally busy or is it a quieter part of the year?
- What projects are you in the midst of?
Season of the Year –
- What is the calendar season? [fall / winter / spring / summer]
- What’s the weather like outside? Does that change what you can do?
A restful weekend is more than crashing on the couch and checking out. Making space for relaxation brings us back to ourselves. It reminds us of who we are outside of what we can produce and what we do during the week.
Hobbies, friendships, alone time, and self-care bring us joy and give us a re-set for the busy week ahead. Without those times of pause, we get stuck in continuous production.
We are not made for going full speed all the time. We are created for cycles of rest and slowness. Our bodies crave a different pace.
You can hear more about my burnout story here:
Subtle Resistance on Spotify 🎙️
I hope that you have found something here that inspires you to try something new.
💙Enjoy your weekend! – April
Check out my social media for more visual “ask my friend” quizzes on a variety of topics.