Stop letting chores eat your free time

Weekends often start with a nagging thought: “I really should get chores done.” That nag can drag on, turning your days off into a series of half-done tasks and lingering guilt. But chores have a strange quality: they expand to fill all available time.

One busy executive realized she spent nearly three hours on Sunday tidying, even though six hours would have sufficed. She decided to run a “chores sprint”—one concentrated hour where she blasted through dishes, vacuuming, and laundry in one shot. She set a timer for each job and focused only on moving fast.

As the buzzer sounded at 60 minutes, she was amazed at how much she’d finished. Even better, the tight window forced her to skip perfectionism and stick to the essentials. She then spent the rest of her Sunday reading on the porch without a second thought about dust or that stray sock.

Research on Parkinson’s Law confirms this phenomenon: work expands to fill the time allotted. By compressing chores into a short block, you force efficiency and free up genuine leisure. It’s a small tweak with big payoff: one hour of focused work unlocks hours of guilt-free downtime.

Pick an hour to dedicate solely to chores, set a timer for each sub-task, batch similar activities, and then celebrate as soon as the buzzer rings. This focused approach forces you to work efficiently, circumvent perfectionism, and carve out real free time. Try a sprint this weekend and notice how much more relaxing the rest of your days feels.