An article in Business Insider gives 13 tips for creating a recharging weekend. Some of my favorites that you can apply this weekend are:

• Make appointments with yourself: setting specific hours or minutes aside for activities YOU want to do
• Planning actually makes weekends happier: “looking forward” to things, being in anticipation of joy, gives us moments of joy now.
• Plan 3 – 5 “anchor” events: You don’t have to plan the entire weekend, but having 3 clear events on your calendar, and doing them, can create a memorable weekend, rather than an unfulfilling & unmemorable weekend.

One of the other tips Vanderkam shares is to write a list of 100 things you dream of doing so you can discover things you can do right now. When we rise above the mammalian obsession with food, sex, and comfort on the weekend, we can find a couple hours to put into our dreams.

Making and keeping an appointment with YOU is especially important for the exhausted parents out there! Your children deserve to learn how to pursue their interests every weekend rather than see a sacrificial parent teaching them that “dreams are not important”.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you about how you used one of the 13 tips this weekend.