How much does work bleed into your weekend?
And what can you do about it?
I’m writing this in the car. On the way down to the Isle of Wight. I will think about work this weekend. I think about work a lot of weekends.
Which is fine with me. I love my job and I’m quite happy thinking about it.
But what if work leaks into your weekend and you’re not happy about it?
What if it “bleeds into your weekend” as a previous client memorably described it.
For this client, work was bleeding into her weekend in ways that were making her miserable. She was waking up on a Saturday, worrying about work, standing on the touchline at her son’s rugby practice with anxiety gnawing away at her.
Distracted at the family Sunday lunch. Constantly checking emails, brain somewhere else.
We’ve all done this at certain points. I once worked six weekends on the trot when a crisis blew up at work, and every weekend led to a new journalist somewhere around the world picking up the steaming turd of a story that I was unlucky enough to be trying to keep out of the papers.
It can happen at particular crunch points in the year. Year End being one of them. But if it’s happening every weekend, and you’re not ok with it, what can you do about it?
Firstly, ask yourself this: “Do I actually need to be working on this now?”
Working at the weekend can become a habit. You’ve done it once because a specific situation required it. And you quite liked it. The mix of adrenaline and the relatively quiet in-box meant you got a lot done. So now you find yourself sneakily fitting in a few hours here and there. Every weekend.
If the answer to the question above, is “No”. Here’s a second one: What am I choosing by working on this now?
Because working at the weekend is always a choice. Even when it doesn’t feel like one.
You’re choosing work over rest, over fun, over being present, over the people in front of you.
That’s not a judgment by the way. Sometimes it’s absolutely the right call. But be clear about it. Own it. Don’t let it happen to you by default.
Third question, and possibly the most useful: What would actually happen if I didn’t do this bit of work now?
Most of us, if we’re honest, would answer: not much. The email can wait until Monday. The deck doesn’t need another read through. The problem you’re turning over in your head at 11am on a Saturday morning will look exactly the same or not as big a deal by Monday.
The “This is urgent” feeling you feel in your body, and the actual urgency are not the same thing.
Our brains scan for threats the whole time. And they often get it wrong. Not answering that email NOW is more often than not, not a matter of life and death. But your body might tell you it is.
And if the answer genuinely is ‘something would go badly wrong’ that’s useful information. It might be worth sitting with that one.”
Finally: What does your weekend actually need to look like for you to feel restored by Monday morning? Not just not-exhausted. Rested.
For my client, it turned out to be surprisingly simple. One short, brain-dump on Friday afternoon. In the notes pages of her phone. Everything nagging at her, out of her head. She sometimes added to it over the weekend if new things showed up. A clear agreement with herself about when, if at all, she’d check in over the weekend.
She didn’t stop thinking about work entirely. But she stopped being poleaxed by it.
As always. I hope this has been useful.
Have a great weekend.
Lisa