If you’re like me, you probably spend your weekends tackling the tasks you didn’t get around to during the work week. By the time you finish the laundry, wash the dishes, wash the floors, or even get more work done — it’s already Monday again.

That’s no way to live, says Cassie Holmes, a happiness researcher and author of “Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most.”

According to Holmes, you should actually treat your weekends like a vacation.

“People associate vacations with a break … whereas our weekends tend to be a routine where we move through our activities,” Holmes said recently on “Everyday life better with Leah Smart” podcast. Treating your weekend like a vacation helps you break out of the “do routine, and it just lets you be.”

In 2017, Holmes ran an experiment on over 400 working Americans. On a Friday, she told some in the group to treat the time as a vacation and told the others to spend it as they would any other weekend. When she measured their happiness afterward, she found that those with a vacation mindset showed more satisfaction and positivity when they returned to work.

The vacationers “did less housework and worked for their jobs, stayed in bed a little longer with their partner, and ate a little more,” she wrote for Harvard Business Review 2019. But the real difference was that they were “more attentive and present during weekend activities.”

For some people, it’s hard to stop going over the events after work. 78% of American workers do not take full advantage of their power take-off, according to a May 2024 Harris Survey. And when they do take time off, 54% say they do cannot disconnect completely from their jobs, one in 2022 Report from Glassdoor found.

If you find yourself feeling down once the weekend rolls around, you can ease into Holmes’ blissful thinking by starting by spending just one day as a vacation, she says.

“Some people think, well (the weekend) is when I do my chores,” she said on the podcast. “Why don’t you do a Saturday? And then Sunday you can do whatever you need to do.

Spend 24 hours doing the things that make you feel most relaxed and disconnected from your normal routine. Take a day trip to a local nature reserve, try a new restaurant or spend the day at a spa. And if you have a lot on your plate, reward yourself with a cocktail after you wash the dishes, or listen to your favorite podcast while you fold clothes for a similar mental break.

Many very successful people use a similar method to make their Mondays more productive. Mark Cuban spends his weekends surrounded by his loved ones, he said at SXSW 2014as his working weeks are usually very busy. Richard Branson prefers to party on Saturday nights and spend Sundays doing activities like cliff jumping and paddle boarding, he told the Telegraph year 2011.

Holmes warns, however, that there is a caveat to the holiday mindset. Spending all your weekends as vacations can reduce the emotional and mental impact of exercise. You won’t feel as rejuvenated and rested as you would if this wasn’t the norm, so act like a vacationer only on the weekends when you really need a break.

“Given that the vacation mindset and resulting happiness derives from mental interruption from routine and daily drudgery, this intervention itself cannot become a routine,” she wrote for HBR.

“When used wisely, this simple makeover allows you to enjoy some of the happiness of a vacation without taking additional time off.”

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