I’m taking a bit of time off this week. One of the benefits of writing about time management is that I’m more mindful of how I spend my time these days. That includes vacation time and weekend time. We put a fair amount of thought into how we spend our workdays, or at least we’re usually accountable to someone for that time. Time off is more nebulous, and so we have a harder time using it well. But I think that leisure time is too precious to be totally leisurely about leisure. There are ways we can all use the 60 hours between that 6 p.m. Friday beer and 6 a.m. Monday alarm clock better. And by better, I don’t mean doing more work. I mean actually enjoying ourselves and achieving the goal of any weekend: rejuvenation, and the ability to face Monday ready to go.
So I’m excited to announce that my next ebook, What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend, will be out Dec. 31. Like my last one, it only costs $3, and is available from all the major booksellers (Amazon, BN.com, Apple). You do not have to own an e-reader (e.g. a Kindle or Nook) to read this book. Amazon has a free Kindle app that you can download and read ebooks directly in your browser. If you prefer listening to your time management literature, I also recorded the tome as an audiobook, which is available through iTunes and Audible. If you’re a regular reader of the blog, I’d really appreciate your giving it a look. And if you’re new to this blog, and coming from one of the media articles or reviews of the book, welcome! I hope you’ll look around and spend a bit of time with my random musings from the last three years. You can post comments on more recent posts, or you are welcome to email me your thoughts on older ones (lvanderkam at yahoo dot com; I had to disable comments on older posts due to some crafty spam bots who were stealing a lot of my time).
I hope you are enjoying some time off this week as well, and I’ll be back to posting regularly in January.
PS. Here’s a great early review from the Hush Everyone blog.
Photo courtesy flickr user opencontent
I look forward to reading it! Already applying your idea of anchor events to winter break this year so the kids have something to look forward to each day.
60 hrs: what to do? Hmmmm……..
I recall a saying,
“Lying in the grass on a sunny day, watching the clouds go by, is hardly a waste of time”.
My mother is battling a terminal illness. The entire family will be watching sunny skies with her this weekend; at her beloved beach cottage.
God bless to all. Especially those who are fortunate to be spending time with loved one’s 🙂
@Crete- lying on the grass isn’t a waste of time at all. I even mention the John Keats poem, Ode on Indolence, which conjures up that image precisely. The thing to remember is that Keats didn’t have the internet or TV. Many of us are tempted to fill our nothing time with those activities, which aren’t as restorative as staring at the clouds. How wonderful that you are able to spend time with your mother at her beloved beach cottage. We should all do more of that cherishing while our loved ones are still with us.
I thought you would like to know that Anthony Trollope the British writer woke up early to write his novels before going to work on this postal route, using his important creative energy first. I imagine he worked at least part of the weekend too. He wrote 47 novels. What an inspiration!
So glad to found your website Laura! It is full of inspirations and specially what we need right now: Better Time Management.
Happy New Year!
Laura, I have just finished the book (I pre-ordered, so woke up to find it waiting for me; a reward for planning ahead) and I loved it. I have spent the last few months building anchor events into my weekends and it has made a positive improvement to my life and allowed me to enjoy my time with my husband more. By taking the time to plan, I have remembered things we used to enjoy doing together and ordered tickets, booked hotels, etc. We wouldn’t have bothered with some if we hadn’t booked ahead as on a couple of occasions the weather was terrible, but one in particular has already found a place in our “memories of us” – we attended an outdoor event and it was raining so hard we both ended up soaked to the skin. We were wet in a way we hadn’t been since we were children. At the time it was awful, but when we got back to the hotel we climbed back into bed to get warm and drank cups of tea and reminisced about all the daft things we have done together. The best days of our lives are now – we just need to take the time to notice that. Thank you for reminding me to take that time. As this is New Year’s Eve I’ll be taking time to plan what I want from next year and I’ll be taking think to bless you for making me think of time and weekends in a different and life enhancing way. Thank you.
@Chrissy- thanks so much for your note, and I’m so glad you got so much out of the ebook. I really do believe in taking time to plan and in remembering that memories are what we have of any experience. Even if something is tough in the moment, you’re often glad for the memories. The experiencing self should not be given more weight than she deserves…