By Erick Rommel | Catholic News Service

There's an ancient song from the 1980s with the lyric, "Everybody's working for the weekend." If there ever were a better example of truth in art, I can't think of it.

Whether you work Monday to Friday; or Wednesday to Monday; or a random schedule where you often forget whether it's day or night, the one truth that binds us all is the desire to look ahead to moments when we won't be working.

Unfortunately, for many of us, the weekend comes and goes, and we look back and wonder what happened to the plans we had to fill that time. In many cases, those visions of fun and idyllic splendor are replaced with a reality that's nothing more than a bleak emptiness of could've and should've.

In reality, weekends and weekdays have a symbiotic relationship. Your success during one directly impacts your success during the other.

In many ways, weekdays are easier. You're successful if you go to work on time, work hard and earn money in order to afford your life. By the time the weekend arrives, all you want to do is sleep in, do nothing and spend money to have fun.

If you do that, your weekend will always overwhelm your weekdays and you'll return to work more tired than when you left, nothing more than an empty shell always looking ahead to a weekend that's never more than five days away.

How do you break that cycle? How do you have fun, productive weekends that motivate and inspire you to reach increasing levels of success during the week?

As a starting point, learn lessons from your weekday schedule and apply them to the weekend.

No matter the job or the salary, successful people go to work with a plan. If you're a successful business person, that plan may include constantly re-evaluating what you need to do to reach your goals. For a factory worker, the plan may include a desire to find efficiencies to improve production.

In both cases, having a plan is more important than the plan itself.

So, what should your weekend plan include? Begin with a promise: You'll sleep more than on a weekday, but not so much that the entire weekend disappears behind your eyes.

Sleep in. But then, get up and get moving.

Include your family in your plans in ways that you can't include them during the week. When you're working late on Thursday evening, text messages of love and support may be appropriate. On the weekend, they're unacceptable.

Take time to discover that spending time with your family doesn't have to mean spending money on your family. Go out and do something, or stay in and do something. Just do something.

No one's favorite memory is that time they saw a special text for the first time.

In everything you do, weekday or weekend, enjoy yourself. At work, joy comes when you feel accomplished in your job and ready to move on to the next challenge. During the weekend, joy comes when you can escape thoughts of work to create the memories necessary to fill your fuel tank of inspiration, becoming ready to move on to the next week.

Finally, the most important of your weekend plans: Find time for yourself where you don't have to do anything.

When you accomplish all that and the weekend is over, you'll be tired, but it will be a good tired. In that moment when you're recharged, use the energy found through your new, unforgettable memories to motivate and inspire yourself to an increasing level of success. Take time to prepare your plan for the week ahead.

After all, a weekend is never more than five days away.

Erick Rommel works for a nonprofit youth organization. He can be reached at [email protected].