Make Your Weekend Productive

Every weekend is a working weekend when you have a blog. I currently have a full time job, so I’m exhausted when I get home on weekdays. This means that I spend a lot of my weekend downtime working on blog posts, videos and photography. This was a real struggle at first because ‘weekends are for rest’, but then I pulled myself together and organised myself to be productive. Here’s what I felt helped me become way more productive on the weekends:

Create your to-do list

First things first is sit down and really think about what you need to do this weekend. Do you need to write a blog post? Go to the gym? Do some household chores? If it needs to be done, write it down. But also be realistic. Don’t add ‘write a full length novel’ on your to do list, add write 2000 words for your first draft. And take a similar mentality to any large projects, break it down.

When you’ve got all of your ideas out, prioritise. You know for a fact that taking photos is so much better in natural daylight, so you have to do this at the weekend whereas the writing could be done on Monday night if you didn’t get round to it. Getting your food shopping it probably more important that watching that TV show you need to catch up on. And sometimes you just can’t fit everything into 48 hours. So pick which tasks are most important to least important and if you don’t finish, don’t feel guilty!

Clear your inbox

Similar to the first thing you do when you get to the office, you need to look through all your emails. Emails will often have your opportunities and maybe even inspiration for what you need to get done. Use your emails to further add to your to do list, and keep your priorities straight!

Clean at least one room in your home

This is something that I put off a lot… because chores are the worst right? But if you spend time cleaning one room every weekend then your whole home will never get too messy. And this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t clean up other areas of your house in the week or as and when needed, but keeping an area tidier helps your mind to stay ‘tidy’ as well. Less clutter can often create a more productive you.

Social media scheduling

You may not have realised but I tweet a lot during the week even though I work in the daytime. This tip is more for bloggers and freelancers, but if you just don’t have the time or capability of promoting your work in the week, schedule it every weekend to keep your social channels engaging.

Get inspired

If you’re trying to work over your weekends, you need something to keep you motivated. Often I find that looking for things that inspire me helps to make my work better, but it also makes me sit down and do it. So for example, I recently started my YouTube channel because I kept watching other peoples videos and eventually just got so motivated that I wanted to do it too. Use some time on your weekends to browse YouTube, different blogs, use social media to find things that interest you. Also, reach out to other people and see what they think. Being around friends and family can inspire you to create different content if you’re a creator, or it will motivate you to work harder because they’re empowering you.

Pamper yourself

Inevitably if you work work work and work, you’re gonna burn out. And you do not want to end up tired, cranky and unable to be productive in any way. So create time (add this to your to do list okay?) to purely sit down, relax and pamper yourself. Whether this time is in the bath, or in front of the TV. Maybe like me you like reading and video games. Just take some time to have fun and wind down.

So are you gonna be productive this weekend?