
Ask HN: What do productive people do on weekends? - polote
We have a lot of articles here about how to be productive and successful. But what are those highly productive people doing on weekends ?
======
mirceal
I am very weary of people that describe/brand themselves as productive. There
is something about getting a lot of things done that is appealing to all of
us, but in the words of a classic “it does not matter how fast you drive if
you’re going in the wrong direction”.

Setting that aside, both during the week and during the weekend I optimize for
physical and emotional health. Eat well, sleep, exercise, spend time with
other humans (your family qualifies as humans :) ). On top of that, if time
allows it: see, learn or experience something new. Reading is awesome for the
learning part btw. If I ever “work” on stuff, it’s to scratch an itch I have
or to align with the above.

Don’t worry about being productive, especially in a non-work related context.
Find out what you enjoy and do that.

~~~
PurpleRamen
The faster you drive in the wrong direction, the earlier you realize that you
drive in the wrong direction, maybe.

~~~
mirceal
that’s true, but only if you know there is such thing as direction

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dahart
What are you hoping to find out with this question? So called “productive”
people do as wide a variety of things on the weekend as everyone else. Some
people are productive in 30 hours per week, and some people are productive
because they work 80 hours per week. Some people make furniture, some relax to
Netflix, some read academic papers, and some get extra sleep. Since we’re on
HN, many startup founders spend their weekends working.

~~~
impendia
I am not OP, but I'm interested in this question too.

To be honest, I'm not too sure what "everyone else" does on the weekend
either, and am curious about that also. Sometimes I end up intending to be
productive, but end up more-or-less procrastinating and neither being
productive nor genuinely relaxing. I've often wondered whether to attempt to
be more disciplined and productive on the weekend (e.g., work, exercise, piano
practice, read "serious" books, etc.), or to embrace relaxing and absolving
myself temporarily of any responsibilities.

I would very much welcome any testimonials from anyone who has made either
decision!

~~~
DoreenMichele
The reality is that it's a judgement call.

Some people have good health and boundless energy. For such people, spending
more hours working can pay off -- at least, in the short run. They may
actually be heading towards burnout without realizing it.

Some people don't have that kind of energy. Pushing themselves too hard
actually hurts their productivity in the short term.

It can also vary over time for the same person. Maybe some weeks, they can do
more, but other weeks, they really need some recharge time.

Wisdom is almost always specific to a particular set of details and is about a
person having deep knowledge of that specific situation and acting on it in an
informed manner. It tends to not generalize as well as we would like.

~~~
impendia
> Wisdom ... tends to not generalize as well as we would like.

Ain't that the truth!

I should maybe make it clear -- I'm not really asking for advice. Rather, I
would find it very valuable to read how a variety of people have answered this
question for themselves.

There is an inevitable bias to what we can observe other people doing: if I
decide to show up to the gym, or to some social activity, or whatever, then I
can see other people who have made the same decision. But one doesn't really
get the opportunity to see firsthand how people spend their downtime.

~~~
DoreenMichele
_Rather, I would find it very valuable to read how a variety of people have
answered this question for themselves._

I agree with this idea. It would also be nice if they fleshed out the _how_
with some of the _why_ in their case (without violating their personal sense
of privacy, preferably).

------
Waterluvian
All summer my wife and I would do the same thing every weekend.

We would find a town within 45 mins, any direction, that we haven't been to.
We'd find a really nice park there and take our toddler and have a picnic.
After that was unplanned. Sometimes we'd go home and take it easy. Sometimes
we'd wander.

~~~
sacado2
45 mn is a rather small radius. Didn't you run out of unknown towns after some
time? I'm pretty sure I've visited all cities in my neighborhood, at least
those that are worth it.

~~~
Waterluvian
Check the map for surrounding Waterloo Ontario. There's a ton of cities and
towns.

------
HenryBemis
Family time. Getting ideas for blog topics, write up a few pointers and ..
Working out. Catching up with friends. If you are doing Forex, then spend a
couple of hours analyzing last weeks' results and begin charting for the next.
Read the news. Catch a movie. Listen to a full album. Do the groceries
shopping for the week (while listening to that full album).

If I am not currently reading a book, I go through my phone's photos and pick
my next read (evertime I walk into a Waterstones I take photos of the books'
covers I find interesting.

Edit/addition: I email myself articles I want to read, chores I need to do,
brainfarts I want to explore, and these must either be done, or take a place
in my calendar, or (my favourite) be deleted :)

------
unforeseen9991
I do the same thing on weekends that I do every day, but as a solopreneur who
is single without kids and works from home, I have that flexibility. I
typically laze around most mornings, meditation, cooking, reading, writing,
long hot shower, exercise etc. Then I spend between 3-6hrs on productive
things (revenue generating or in pursuit of revenue generation). Sometimes
that will go much longer, depending on how into it I am, but rarely ever below
3hrs.

As mostly all of my friends are only fully available on weekends, that's
usually the only thing that is different is that these activities that are in
person usually only take place then.

The weekend as a thing is a very modern invention. I've found that i'm much
more relaxed day to day and no longer have to "look forward" to a weekend for
a break. I take those breaks as I need them. It did/does take a lot of
cultivated discipline to make this work though, if you hate your work that's
going to be a problem for this lifestyle.

------
analog31
Sleep in, take the kids to their activities, play music, take care of the
house, ride my bike, tinker with bikes in the garage.

Saturday is Pizza Night -- homemade of course.

A few hours on Sunday to take care of the side business.

Sometimes I think about something that requires a little bit of peace and
quiet away from the office.

------
64BitChris
On Saturdays, I wake and get to the office by 4am, just like a regular
workday. The only difference is I'll leave around 9-10 am (vs 5-6 pm M-F) when
the family is awake. Let's me catch up on things I missed during the week.

Sundays I'll try to keep my mind off work but still find myself thinking of
things.

~~~
dgellow
So you’re working ~13h per week day and ~6h per weekend? To be honest that
doesn’t sound healthy at all. What are your reasons to work that much, if
you’re willing to share?

------
alasano
As a person who was under the impression they were having a productive weekend
but who is somehow writing an answer on HN now...!

Personally I would describe productive time as

* Anything which isn't consuming media, whether it's movies/tv shows/Reddit/HN/gaming.

Then starting with the obvious "gotta do it" or "good for you" stuff.

* Just finished doing my taxes

* Cleaning your place, organizing your things

* Cooking / Meal Prep

* Working Out

* Seeing friends & family

And then I'd separate any efforts made towards personal development and in
pursuit of goals you've set, separated into two main categories.

1) Learning (Coding, How to do a rubiks cube, anything really which requires
concentration and effort)

2) Creating (Any side project, personal business, home improvement, etc.)

These categories are broad enough to include pretty much everything.

Any mix of these activities in which I minimize the consuming media part, I'm
happy with.

------
yesenadam
I don't have 'weekends'. Part of 'success' seems to me doing what you love and
what you want to do, and if you're doing that, you want to do it every day,
and never 'retire'. Then work and play aren't clearly separate. I don't really
have 'hobbies', or I don't understand the idea, at least - I'm kind of equally
serious (and unserious[0]) about everything I do. (e.g. for me, whether it's
programming, making music, making art, learning some new subject or skill etc)
I've noticed from all over the place that 'side projects' almost normally
become peoples' main thing, whether in science, programming, art etc. Whatever
they're working on for fun and curiosity.

(I read recently about how the Institute for Advanced Studies produced almost
nothing, because although it sounded great, to pay geniuses to spend as long
as they wanted on anything, the effect was that there were 'no side projects',
and making everything 'the main thing' seems to somehow stultify it. Maybe
we're natural procrastinators, and the AIS model was defeated by that.)

[0] I mean, in the sense of being alert for the comical, unexpected side of
things. A playful sense of joy. Most of my favourite writers (e.g. Chesterton,
Russell, Kierkegaard) have a great sense of humour, university lecturers too.
I got into following chess tournament commentary online because of some
commentators who were very funny. (e.g. Mig Greengard, Ben Finegold, Jan
Gustafsson). I've noticed almost all great scientists, mathematicians I
read/hear have a strong sense of humour, in their personalities if not in all
their works. It's not separate from their curiosity and serious intellectual
concerns.

------
gnulinux
Sleep, youtube, Netflix. If you're very productive 5 days, do you really have
to be productive 2 more days? Sometimes I do try to be productive on Sundays
like reading, side project programming, walking, hiking, laundry etc... But
give my lazy Saturdays please.

------
elliekelly
I started teaching myself to code about a year ago and in my last job before I
"retired" to travel I managed a team that was woefully inefficient and stuck
in their ways. I was _constantly_ telling them "there's always a better way!"
When I had learned enough about programming to strike out on my own a bit I
realized I need to practice building stuff that was a bit more
complex/interesting than yet another To Do App. So I started to keep a little
list of all the things I encountered that were frustratingly inefficient or
annoying so I could try to "build a better way" as a way to practice coding.

I try to work on building something from my list every weekend. I'll be the
first to admit that (so far at least) most of the things I've built have not,
in fact, been better than the status quo. But it lets me flex my problem-
solving muscles a bit and I definitely learn better by coding something from
scratch than I do from any code-along course/project.

------
lumost
In addition to the great advice in this thread, I'd recommend finding
something which doesn't involve a screen or work context that you can be
interested in. The brain works best when it has a multitude of activities, and
crises don't seem as large when you have alternate activities.

------
Ayesh
I wouldn't call myself productive, but I take a great pleasure in Security
bounty hunting. My day to day work doesn't leave me a lot of freedom to spend
a few hours focused in something.

------
parksy
Define "Productive" Define "Success"

Assuming I qualify, no two weekends are the same, I don't have a routine.

This particular weekend? I slept in. I sent an email that I've been drafting
all week. I had dinner with my parents, wife and kids for my daughter's
birthday, and spent some time by the pool at the hotel drinking beer (it's
rare I catch up with my parents, they drove up specifically for the day). I
deleted a post I'd spent an hour writing because I realised I had to go back
and rethink the entire premise of my reply. I spent a few hours catching up on
a legal drama between two game developers. I intended to play some apex
legends but now I wasted too much time in the evening watching youtube and
drinking. I watched a tutorial video or two. I wrote this reply and almost
deleted it too...

Overall my weekends boil down to: Family stuff, personal projects, sleep and
recreation.

(I should add, I invested hugely in building my career profile, lots of
weekends and late nights involved so the story is very different now that
people are chasing me for my skills instead of the other way around).

------
ianai
The most productive person I know literally cannot stop. He has to be doing
something every moment of the day or he turns sour. He’s also horrible to be
around often because he’s prone to caustic, hyper criticism. He seems to have
been born with more energy than average. Tho maybe it’s a symptom of ocd or
somehow related?

I personally average one completely lazy day per weekend and one day of
getting everything done.

~~~
Pimpus
Sounds like a personality trait, not a mental disorder. High conscientiousness
plus high neuroticism would be my guess from my favorite armchair.

Anyway, I agree that obsessing over productivity can be toxic. The correct
mindset is to be efficient, not just productive, so you can finish your tasks
faster in order to enjoy life sooner.

------
zenkat
I am going for a hike along the coast on a beautiful spring day with my wife.

~~~
Opportunity007
I have no idea who you are, but I like you already.

------
tracer4201
Generally my weekend activities include:

* Sleep * workout * some computer games * grocery shopping * hacker news and some other forums

I read on weekends quite a bit. Currently reading Release It! Design and
Deploy Production Ready Software. Outside of weekends, I really only read
books during my commute in the morning.

I also wrap up laundry on weekends- bed sheets, towels, clothes.

I do cleaning my apartment on weekdays and so on weekends, everything is
pretty clean generally aside from laundry. I will dust and vacuum the
apartment and clean the bathroom over a couple days in the week and so it
never accumulates to feeling like a big task.

I might go out shopping for clothes or books (there’s an amazon book store in
walking distance) with my spouse. Occasionally we go out to eat on weekends.

The kitchen we never have to devote time for on the weekends. My spouse and I
have a strict rule to never leave a dirty kitchen overnight. We cook a few
times each week in quantities to last the whole week and we promptly wash
cookware and dishware.

------
TuringNYC
Wake up early on Saturday/Sunday. Endurance exercise -- usually relaxed long-
distance biking ~20+ miles. In NYC it was limited, but in Washington DC
suburbs, I keep strictly to country trails, so it is simultaneously also
forest bathing, of sorts ([http://www.shinrin-yoku.org/shinrin-
yoku.html](http://www.shinrin-yoku.org/shinrin-yoku.html)) Some days i'll walk
instead of bike (~6mi) and listen to big-picture audio-books in the seclusion
of the forest walk, so awesome.

Be back home by 11am. Before I had family, I used to read the rest of the day
and go to restaurants/cafes with friends in the evening. Now, with family, I
spend the rest of the day with family doing art, reading, puzzles, playground
stuff.

After this, I sleep very well in the evenings because I'm tired to the bone.
I'm incredibly productive on Monday/Tuesday after this sort of stress cleanse.

------
BossingAround
No idea whether I'm productive, but generally, 2h in the morning of studies,
then cook, eat, rest, 2-3h in the afternoon for studies, and then rest.

By studies, I mean whatever I deem productive to studying... At this moment,
I'm doing a math mooc, but I did certifications as well, new technologies, or
simply engage in second work when I had one.

------
segmondy
They do whatever they set out to do for the weekend.

For some, that's clean the house, grocery runs, laundry, cook, date with their
partner, play with the kids, read a book, video games, visit family & friends,
sleep in, work on their hobby, whatever it is. if you planned for it and get
it done, then you're productive.

------
ojhughes
A lot of productive people are as passionate and productive with their free
time as they are with work. Competitive, challenging, adrenaline filled and
technical activities have great appeal. Things like road cycling, kite
surfing, ultra running and skiing attract productive types.

------
conmarap
Basically taking care of whatever can't be done through the week. There is
also a need to relax, should your job be demanding, but if you have an idea in
mind, it's important to spend some time to do some research on it and
bootstrap it.

------
harias
I don't know many highly productive people, but the few I know don't
differentiate between weekdays and weekends. Working seems to be a habit, and
they appear to enjoy it. Might be a case of Stanford duck syndrome though.

------
muzani
Network with infants. Early investment is best; you get diminishing gains as
they age. You need someone trustworthy to delegate your empire to when you're
older, so better get your propaganda game on now.

~~~
quickthrower2
I’m surprised the venture capitalists aren’t scouting 5 year olds as future
founders.

~~~
muzani
VC funds don't go that long. Strategic marriages are a great long term
investment.

------
vincentstorme
Working/bootstrapping my company when I'm not working at my day job

------
falco925
Usually I'm trying to balance out many things, which makes it more difficult
than the weekdays:

\- getting more sleep \- working on my side startup \- getting some form of
exercise \- reading all the things I've queued up during the week \- errands
around the house \- spending time with family

The weekends, I find, are more hectic than the weekdays. There's no set
schedule and it changes every weekend.

------
ww520
Sleep. Exercise. Go out.

------
foxish
I tend to take one-off classes at Stanford to try and see if I can short-
circuit some learning that would otherwise come the hard way. Aside from that,
sometimes meeting other entrepreneurs, working on long term projects that I
don't get to do during the week, and meeting friends to have a few laughs
together.

------
ken
I don't work a 9-5, so weekends aren't that special to me. Often I work on
weekends, or don't work on weekdays.

This weekend is the beginning of tech week in the theatre -- I'll leave it up
to the reader to decide if that's evidence of my productivity and success, or
lack of!

------
ramy_d
The first thing I do is a list of the things I want to. The list could have
anything from chores like cleaning and laundry, to reading or playing games,
alone time sometimes makes the list too as does work and/or hobby projects I
want to spend time on, etc. I sort it and I try to work through it.

------
werber
I tend to work Saturday morning for a few hours on something I find
interesting work or otherwise and then do housework and get ready for the next
week. Saturday nights I might go out with friends. Sundays I try to see family
or friends for brunch and then relax and cook

------
LouisSayers
Sat: 8:45am kettle bells / body weight workout 9:15-10am boxing fitness class

Then home, shower, breakfast

11am-3pm work (my own stuff) 3:30-5pm massage

Might do another hour work after that, but otherwise relax

Sunday - maybe a couple hours work, otherwise time with gf, brunch / go out
and do something and relax

------
vkaku
Either you're working or you're not. Any time not meant for work is strictly
prohibited for doing any work.

I do not work unless I want to.

I am hardly productive in one sense because I know when not to work.

I optimize for problem understanding and lazy solving these days.

------
jakeway
Not spending time on HN.

~~~
philshem
but today is the weekend

------
emerongi
If we reversed the question, would the thread get any replies?

~~~
BossingAround
Idempotent questions are my new favorite thing.

------
RickJWagner
Reading Hacker News, of course!

------
datpuz
I'm getting doing Georgia Tech's online CS master's program.

------
aloukissas
Sleep.

Take a "digital sabbath" (google it).

Exercise.

The dividends those pay in the long run are huge.

~~~
quickthrower2
Aka sabbath?

------
LifeQuestioner
relaxing

------
eecks
Code, learn, drink and spend time with friends

------
ntlk
Sleep and cook.

------
olefoo
Chores.

------
adv0r
trailrunning

------
faissaloo
Consume, create and distribute memes. Work on personal projects. Watch
YouTube.

