WONDERZINE launches a new section on how to properly relax over the weekend in different life circumstances. Simply put, we give advice for all cases - what to do so that by Monday morning you don’t feel overwhelmed and ashamed of a pointlessly wasted weekend.
What to do on the weekend if you are alone? Not lonely, but alone and with a great desire to restore the strength spent during the week. There are a lot of plans, but every time the everyday stagnation spills over into the weekend and repeats Groundhog Day. One day it's worth trying to act according to plan. For example, like this:
Change your appearance for a short time
and social circle
When you live according to the same algorithm for years, the picture of the world becomes blurred, and the joy from every day you live goes away. Wait with the accusations of banality: psychologists have found that even clothes can completely change our mood and behavior. For example, if you ask a person to put on a white coat, he will automatically perform the assigned work more carefully. A timid girl dressed in tomboy style straightens her shoulders and feels more confident.
Dramatic reforms can be made not only in clothing, but also in behavior and social circles. If among your friends and acquaintances there is a person whom you openly or secretly admire and would like to learn something from him (for example, making connections and easily communicating with people, running a household or business) - become his partner for a day. Observe, learn and help.
Digital detox
A typical weekend scenario: as soon as we open our eyes, we go online and spend the entire day on it. Researchers talk about real addiction - every new photo, text, status update stimulates the release of the pleasure hormone dopamine, and it encourages you to log into the social network again and again. As a result, the brain feels crowded and chaotic, memory suffers, the ability to create and plan, communicate live with loved ones, friends, make new acquaintances - we become autistic, withdraw into ourselves. Mood swings, fears, phobias, depression are also the price to pay for the habit of being “stupid on Facebook.”
Digital detox (temporarily eliminating all electronic devices from life) is a proven way to protect the brain from information intoxication. The rules are the same as with food detox. Start early - reduce your time online by 15 minutes every day of the week. Don't take your phone with you when you go to lunch, and don't put it next to your bed - buy a regular alarm clock. It is better to schedule a digital detox on a day free from work, when you belong to yourself and can relax. Pick the sites or apps you spend the most time on and ask yourself: what is it about them that draws you to them? Try to find a replacement for them in real life. If you're inspired by artistic photos on Instagram, go to an art gallery. If you spend hours on fitness blogs, go jogging or skiing.
In the evening, when you turn on your phone again and are flooded with filtered photos from your friends' fun weekends on Facebook, remind yourself that social networks reflect only the most beautiful moments in the lives of others. Most of them are not so shiny and remain behind the scenes.
Sport
Most of us view exercise as a bitter medicine: hard physical labor in exchange for health and a slim figure. Few people realize that the body is initially programmed to enjoy movement (hence the expression “muscle joy”). After 40–50 minutes of intense exercise, the brain begins to produce cannabinoids, substances similar to those found in marijuana. They relieve anxiety, pain and create the so-called runner's euphoria (“runner's high”). Athletes describe it as a feeling of complete relaxation, pure delight, harmony with oneself and nature, “as if you are rocking on the waves of happiness.” Women aged from 18 to 63 years old can experience orgasm during physical training. Here is a ranking of fitness types in increasing pleasure: race walking, running, cycling, yoga, strength training, abdominal exercises.
This coming weekend, try doing your workout as if it were a reward in itself. Concentrate on the pleasant sensations while doing the exercises. Finally, one more inspiring argument from Jane Fonda in favor of sports: “Perhaps the fastest way to clear your mind is to get your body in order. Get your thoughts out of your head and take care of your body.”
Creative date
If the words “going to an exhibition” or “excursion to the theater” make your cheekbones ache, try creative dates. The author of the term, American director and screenwriter Julia Cameron, wrote a bestseller on this topic - “The Artist's Way” (by the way, a great idea for weekend reading). Choose one of your favorite activities (a visit to an art supply store, a spa, an Italian lesson, an outing, a regular walk in the park) and go on a date with him. It is important not to take anyone with you for company and not to force yourself out of control. Instead, a creative date should be about spontaneity and time for yourself and what you truly love. You don’t need to look up to anyone or look back; the more you behave like a child, the more ideas and insights come to your mind.
Do some spring cleaning
Cold, darkness, dirt and chaos in the house, lack of sleep provoke bouts of gluttony - proven by scientific research. Moreover, on weekends, as a rule, overeating reaches its peak. Start your weight loss program not with a diet, but with spring cleaning. Give away or throw away unnecessary items. Buy beautiful bedding and try to sleep at least 7 hours a night. If you are cold, wear more soft clothes.
Listen to the music
Ten minutes of good music can play the role of the most effective meditation and, in addition, acts on the brain as cardio training: it strengthens blood vessels, improves the functioning of memory and imagination. Develop a sense of music - there is melody in all the sounds around us, we are just used to thinking of them as noise.
Cosmetic procedures
A day off is the ideal time for spa treatments. If the budget is very small, you can limit yourself to a massage. In a good salon, along with a massage, they offer free access to the hammam and swimming pool. You can carry out a full cycle of cleansing and nourishing the skin, relax muscles, relieve stress, reduce cellulite and swelling. To enhance the effect, on the day of visiting the salon, eat minimally (give preference to light dairy products, vegetables and fruits) and drink more water. After the massage, spend the rest of the day in relaxation and tranquility - no urgent meetings or parties.
Illustrations: Masha Shishova
Modern life often requires intense work, as a result of which, at a certain point, fatigue accumulates, both physical and emotional. It is important to know how to rest properly so that your activities are productive and your mood is positive.
The need to restore the body
Adequate rest is a vital necessity for a person, without which the quality of work sharply decreases. To determine the optimal mode of work and rest, you need to remember a few simple rules.
To work productively, you need to restore your strength. Rest is not an escape from work, but a way to recharge with energy. It does not mean lying at home in front of the TV for many hours. In order to wake up in the morning with a fresh head and positive thoughts, you need to arrange for yourself in the evening.
A walk, a cool shower and a clean bed will provide. Each person has an individual need for sleep, but 8 hours is considered ideal. During this time, the body has time to fully recover, physically and psychologically. If a situation arises where you cannot get enough sleep at night, you need to take a short nap during the day, just as people who are usually engaged in mental activity rest.
You need to start resting when fatigue has not yet appeared and you still have the strength to organize physical activity. The optimal work week is 40 hours. Increasing this time will not increase productivity, but will lead to fatigue and depression, which may require long-term treatment.
Fractional rest is more rational. It is better to rest for 10 minutes every hour. If fatigue accumulates, it will be much more difficult to cope with it. That is why standards have been developed for office workers. People whose work involves computers are entitled to 15-minute breaks every hour. This time should be spent on a short walk in the park or doing physical exercise. Such a short but active rest will significantly increase the productivity of further work.
Changing the type of activity
Even in Ancient Greece, changing the type of activity was considered an example of how to rest. And for good reason! Rest implies a change in the activity of various organs:
- alternating mental work with physical work is the best option for recuperating;
- if work involves low physical activity, rest should be associated with movement - this could be swimming, running or just a walk in the park.
A change of scenery
Changing the environment allows you to effectively restore strength:
- if the work involves being indoors, rest should be spent outdoors;
- if a person works in a team, then he will receive emotional relief by staying in solitude for a while, preferably in nature;
- for people who work outdoors, a trip to the theater or museum will be a real pleasure;
- When doing office work, a visit to the gym, club or dance floor will allow you to relax.
A change in emotional state is also important for the nervous system. If during the day there are many meetings with different people, nervous tension accumulates, then how to relax after work? Emotional fatigue can be relieved by a walk in the forest or along the river bank. When dealing with monotonous paperwork, game sports or, for example, a disco will be an excellent way to relax.
You need to be able to disconnect from work after a hard day. You should not discuss problems related to your main activity or unfinished business at home. It is also advisable to turn off your phone even during a short rest.
A healthy lifestyle contributes to effective recovery. Alcoholic drinks can give the illusion of temporary relief, but later an even greater loss of energy will occur, and the next day you will have a headache.
Weekend in nature
It’s worth planning your weekend getaway in advance. It is impossible to sleep for a week in two days. Lying aimlessly on the couch in front of the TV will also not relieve fatigue. It is better to go with family or friends outside the city, to the forest or mountains, to the river. Such a vacation will charge you with positive emotions for the whole week and will allow you to go to work on Monday in a good mood.
Some tips will tell you how to relax after work on the weekend:
- a person who works without rest wears out his body faster; it is important for him to realize the need to recuperate;
- reduce to a minimum the time spent at the computer or TV;
- do not set an alarm clock on the weekend morning - you can oversleep a little;
- do not run to the kitchen to prepare breakfast - there is no rush;
- do not accumulate all your tasks for the weekend and do not try to redo them;
- forget about household plans and take a walk in the park, have a family lunch in a cozy cafe, or do some kind of sport.
Vacation
Even for a person doing what he loves, vacation is necessary. It helps restore vital energy, without which the body will constantly be in a state of fatigue. A person who regularly and properly rests has better health and reliable immunity. It is better suited for intense mental activity.
In order for the vacation to bring maximum effect, it is better to split it into several parts and rest every three to four months for one week. This is quite enough to fully restore your strength and not lose the habit of work. A long rest is too relaxing, after which it is more difficult to get back into the usual rhythm. Therefore, you need to choose the best option. The best vacation spots are quiet, picturesque corners of nature. You can go to the sea or lake, to the mountains, to the river bank, away from the noisy city.
When leaving work, many people dream of catching up on sleep and lying on the beach. However, you also need to rest properly on vacation. Hiking, sea air and water, fresh fruits and herbs will help cleanse and restore the body.
It is necessary to draw up a vacation plan that will include active activities - visiting historical and natural attractions, museums. It is especially interesting to observe the life of an unfamiliar city, get acquainted with the local culture, and participate in national holidays. The more eventful the vacation, the more vivid memories will remain. They will also be reminded of by photographs and videos that will evoke positive emotions.
When going on vacation, you should not choose night flights. After them, it takes a lot of time to adapt, sleep and recuperate; for a long time you feel not rested, but tired. In the first days, you should also not get carried away with active activities until the body has rebuilt itself. It's better to relax a little, go swimming, walk.
During your vacation, you don’t need to call work, find out the news, it’s better to read light literature. Shopping should not be left until the last day. At the end of your vacation, it is better to leave two days for a relaxing holiday. As a rule, many people get very tired from shopping.
How to properly relax after work? Using these recommendations, you can effectively organize your routine. This will allow you to always be cheerful, cheerful and healthy.
The first danger awaits us in the evening of a regular working day, when we no longer want anything. To avoid spending the entire evening on social networks, cut off your escape routes in advance. Buy a ticket to a concert, promise your spouse a trip to a restaurant, bet with a friend that you won’t miss a workout. And in order not to think on your tired head, right now do a simple exercise “Evening Rest Scenarios”.
Divide the sheet into two columns. On the left, write options for a typical dull evening: “scrolling through Instagram,” “sitting in front of the TV.” And on the right - remember the good options: “walk in your favorite park”, “go to a new exhibition”, “dive into the pool after working out in the gym”.
An excellent option for those who meet Friday in a state of squeezed lemon. All you need to do is finish your work 1-2 hours early once a week, leave the office and carry out one of the evening relaxation scenarios. Do something that you don’t have enough time and energy to do on an ordinary evening: go to the cinema, to a water park or to a concert. Having a quality rest in the middle of the week, you will get much more done in the remaining working days. For a half-day off, Wednesday evening is ideal.
Planning a weekend getaway is a pleasant experience and rarely causes problems. But a mountain of household chores is a real danger of ruining everything. After all, it is on the weekend that most of us are used to shopping for groceries, cleaning, washing and cooking.
Here are a few ways to clear your weekend from household chores or significantly reduce the time spent on these activities:
a) Make to-do lists, assign responsibilities and deadlines. Everything is like at work. This will save several hours.
b) Don’t save things up for the weekend. For example, you can start the washing machine on Tuesday evening.
c) Delegate. The rest of the family, including children. Or to professionals, but for money (the windows can be washed by guys from a special office, for example).
d) Buy groceries on weekdays. Remember the terrible queues and traffic jams on Sundays.
e) Use delivery services (food, household chemicals, pet products).
Rituals are needed not only for work, but also for relaxation. It's the details that differentiate an ordinary action from a ritual. Compare: fry a “ready kebab” from something unknown or choose good meat yourself, marinate it with interesting spices, fry it on the right grill, serve it in beautiful dishes.
Here are some ideas:
a) Entertainment: cinema, theater, football
b) Pleasures for the body: bath, massage, spa
c) Communication with nature: forest, river, sea
d) Sports: bicycle, badminton, skiing
e) Games: board games, cards, chess
e) Food: kebabs, cake
Dr. Elaine Eaker warns that you should not rest less than twice a year, otherwise the risk of heart attack and depression increases significantly. At the same time, it is better to rest little by little, but more often.
Options:
a) 2 weeks in summer + New Year holidays + November and May holidays
b) 2 weeks + spread one day over Fridays to make a long weekend
c) change the climate: leave winter for summer
Taking a month off at once is a bad idea.
On vacation, alternate between resting and switching. Relaxation is a passive scenario, such as lying on the beach and reading a book. Switching is an active option that gives vivid impressions: exploring architectural monuments, playing volleyball.
The most important switch must happen at the beginning of your vacation - you need to switch from work. Therefore, first we “pump up” ourselves with switches in order to knock work problems out of our heads, then we rest passively, and so we alternate until the end of the vacation.
Before going to work, passive rest is required, one or two days. Otherwise, you will go to work exhausted and unrested.
Everyone knows that rest is good. But what is real rest? How often should a person rest? How to relax so that you have energy left for work later? Zurab Kekelidze, Deputy Director of the State Scientific Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry named after V.P. Serbsky, tells.
How much sleep do you need?
There is nothing more important than a full night's sleep - after all, it is the body and brain that have time to truly rest.
"You need to sleep at night eight hours. You can replace part of your nighttime sleep with daytime sleep, but only temporarily if the situation is such that you can’t get a full night’s sleep,” explains Kekelidze.
Daytime sleep is especially useful for those who are forced to absorb a large flow of information - with its help you can seriously improve your memorization. However, the duration of sleep should be short.
How much do you need to work?
“A person should work no more than 40 hours a week,” says the psychiatrist. — That is, five working days of eight hours. Now there are proposals to increase the working week to 60 hours, but this is unacceptable. The person will become tired, and during these 60 hours work productivity will be lower than during the usual 40. Most likely, the employer will face a problem as a result working hours rather than actual activities. After all, a person is simply physically unable to work intensively 60 hours a week.”
But even a “from bell to bell” working day does not imply continuous deepening into work. From time to time a man must do breaks.
This usually happens as fatigue accumulates. But some types of work even have their own regulations that determine break times.
Let's look at the standards?
There are also ones for office workers. So, for example, for those who do not use the computer very intensively, but mostly negotiate on the phone or communicate with clients in person, a 15-minute break is provided every two hours of work, not counting the lunch break.
And for those who practically do not look up from the keyboard, 15-minute breaks are assigned every hour - according to the standard instructions on labor protection when working on a personal computer (TOI R-45-084-01).
Use them - then in the remaining time you will be able work efficiently, and not spend time on social networks, not being able to force yourself to do anything.
Down with smoke breaks
The best break is not a smoke break, which turns out to be additional stress for an exhausted nervous system, but an opportunity move fully.
The best option is a short walk to a square, park or winter garden. After all, just five minutes in the company of “green friends” is an excellent stress prevention.
If this is not possible, do a few exercises to prevent poor posture, do a little self-massage, or take a walk with a glass of water.
Weekends - for relaxation
Scientists unanimously believe that the best rest is change of activity. Therefore, you should not spend it on solving work issues or part-time work.
Moreover, sitting at the computer in the evenings and on weekends can seriously disrupt your sleep and wakefulness patterns. This means depriving you of the opportunity to fully relax.
Those leading a predominantly sedentary lifestyle are advised to take an upright position and, if possible, actively saturate the blood with oxygen while walking or on a foray out of town. But for those who are “feeded by their legs”, it is enough to do stretching exercises regularly. In addition to improving physical fitness, they help relieve stress.
The main thing is to plan your weekend in advance so that the problem of choosing a pastime does not become additional stress.
Vacation – all year round
Four one-week vacations a year are significantly better than one long vacation. After all, during a long rest, people get used to relaxation and laziness, and it is difficult for them to get back into the working rhythm. A short vacation makes you appreciate every day of rest and not waste them on drinking or watching TV.
But it's better don't leave your meridian- that is, try to ensure that the time difference is no more than 2-3 hours, and the body does not have to rebuild the regime twice in a short time.
“New Year’s holidays should not be considered holidays in the literal sense of the word,” Kekelidze notes, “and you cannot turn all ten days into drinking alcohol and a continuous feast. This vacation should be treated as a paid vacation and used as much as possible - for travel or relaxing at home. Because there's more to come three hard months of winter».
The most important
Eight hours of sleep, a 15-minute break every two hours, not spent in the smoking room, and at least two vacations a year are the key to proper rest for almost any person.