Consider rethinking your weekend with five principles:

1 – The Rule of Eights - The Weekend Rule of Eight involves equal parts sleeping time, unstructured time, and structured time divided between tasks and fun—eight hours for each both days. Try for eight total hours of productivity and eight for intentionally doing enjoyable things. Only one-third of your weekend is “planned,” and only one-sixth of it is tagged of unpleasantness.

2 – Set Up for the Week Ahead - When looking at weekend chores, make sure you’re including things that set you up for an easier week ahead. The work week functions best when you’re devoting as little time and energy as humanly possible to housework and other chores. Knock out anything that takes more than half an hour of concentrated time; and anything where by doing it once for all five days of the work week saves you from doing it five times during the week.

3 – Fast Mornings, Slow Mornings – Just like on the weekdays, get up and be productive before the kids wake up. We work on our side hustle and then hit the gym. Then, just as our little nuggets start to stir, we load up a breakfast tray and climb into our king-sized bed as a family to cuddle and caffeinate our way through a family-friendly tv show. About 8am, we head downstairs for eggs, and by 9am, we are ready to get started on the day—with massive momentum.

4 – Get Out of the House - This is similar to advice given to women on maternity leave. You may cringe at the prospect, and it may make you tired even thinking about all the effort it will entail, but get yourself and the family out of the house and off on some kind of excursion each and every weekend. In a perfect world, you’d strive to do something new each weekend as an excursion, or at the very least, not something you’ve done in the last 3 months. A new restaurant or a new park or a new friend’s house for a barbeque. Go to the movies, or to the museum or to the outlet mall or the zoo.

5 – The Sunday 3pm Rule - If we’re doing work on a weekend—be it chores or home improvements or our side hustle or entertaining—we wrap it up by 3pm on Sunday. Late afternoon and early evening on Sunday are devoted to a quiet family dinner, hanging out together, and getting everyone to bed early so we can attack and own the week ahead. Nothing is worse then getting to 6pm on Sunday will three tasks to go and no dinner plan. Collapsing into bed late Sunday night is no way to start a work week.

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