Your weekend plans, priorities, and activities are a direct reflection of who you are during the week. This is not to say that a Friday night spent drinking renders you a whiskey connoisseur (or an alcoholic); rather, weekend indulgences can be a sign that you've been in full force all week and your body simply needs some balance. Regardless, it is important to assess the way you spend your weekend time under the same lens of careful scrutiny that you apply to your workweek. 

Whether your weekend is structured around work, play, or catching up on sleep, you should ultimately be focused on productivity: preparing yourself for the upcoming week. Plan your weekends ahead, and make sure to incorporate these three critical components.

1. Errands and personal tasks

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it's actually incredibly easy to get caught up in the "weekend = freedom" mentality and neglect your ever-expanding list of chores and errands. No matter how much sleep you catch up on, a skipped grocery run or an ignored faucet leak will bite you in the ass come Sunday night--when you suddenly remember how much more exhausting these errands are during the week than during the weekend. 
Devote portions of your weekends to tackling these tasks; planning ahead helps. Not only will this create a smoother transition into Monday, but it will also foster a balance between your personal and professional needs. Try to focus on errands that get you away from computers and screens, so that you can exercise different parts of your brain than you do during the week.

2. Variation

No matter what weightings you allocate to the various priorities and plans that constitute your weekend agenda, make sure to provide yourself with a healthy mixture of activities. Even if you're exhausted and want nothing more than to sleep continuously for the full 48 hours of your weekend, force yourself into other, equally healing practices: yoga, leisure swimming, golf, reading, or spending time with loved ones.
Planning your weekend around a variety of activities, even if they're all relaxing and low-energy, will give your mind and body the impression that you achieved more than you really did. This allows you to recover from a stressful workweek without losing the productive rhythms that you'll need to kick into full swing on Monday morning.

3. Multitasking

Between errands, family responsibilities, work preparations, and your social life, meeting all of your obligations over the course of a weekend can seem impossible. However, there are ways to multitask and satsify multiple needs by finding a middle ground between goals.
The easiest way to incorporate multitasking into your weekend is through activities that allow you to relax and indulge your personal cravings while still enriching other aspects of your life. For example, if you like to spend your down time blogging or browsing social media, start using your platforms as marketing tools to help your firm grow orwrite a blog to get more clients. 

Plan your weekend with these three items in mind and feel the change in your energy and attitude on Monday morning. Then, let us know if these tips have helped (or if you have any additional suggestions!) by leaving a comment below this post.