I'm lucky to say my work is extremely personally rewarding, which incentivizes me to tackle interesting problems in my free time. However this can come at the cost of time invested in other valuable aspects of life, which complement the whole system of self, such as relationships and hobbies.
Personally, feeling as if I'm neglecting those facets results in a build up of stress which I cary into the week, so the weekend is a great time to tend to the self and heal that stress. Crunching through tasks while stressed out can help for acute heroic movements, but (for me) doesn't scale to produce the best quality work long term.
There's also a cultural impact of working on the weekends when it pings everyone on your team with notifications. I've absolutely been guilty of doing that when in the zone, but when on the receiving end I've found even having my notifications set to a personal focus mode, my eyes can quickly catch and parse a non-critical work-related discussion email when scrolling past the silenced notification. That still tends to mentally pull me out of the moment during my recharge time.
If not critical, I avoid working on weekends. Primarily for following reasons:
1. Like spending time with my spouse and young daughter because on weekdays I am mostly not at home
2. Used to work on weekends earlier and gotten into a habit of postponing deep work to weekends (because of communication noise during weekdays). Instead of finding ways to be more productive on weekdays. Hence, now I force myself to prioritize and get stuff done on weekdays - stretch for long hours on weekdays instead of falling prey to catching up on weekends
@pethron absolutely! Happy personal life leads to a happy and productive professional life too :) I can understand weekend grinds in certain life stages and for certain times but otherwise its not a great idea
Usually no, you just end up working on borrowed time that you'll have to pay back in some way in the near future (getting sick more often, burnout, etc.)
Nope.
Used to but life has more to offer haha.
Usually one day is completely off, Sunday is for weekly planning, strategy things I don't get to during the week.
Modyfi