With the long weekend approaching, it is interesting to look at how super successful people spend their free time. Do they totally unplug from work or do they use this as a time to pursue more projects? Or, do they just have six-hour brunches?

Here are the long weekend activitiies of 23 successful people.

1. They dress differently

Fashion mogul Tory Burch has a weekend wardrobe. “I dress differently in the country than in the city. I wear tennis whites or our lightweight button-down camp shirts with espadrilles,” she told Travel & Leisure. “And I’m more drawn to color—my closet in the Hamptons is very colorful.”

2. They relax

Legendary author Mark Twain was all about having a relaxing Sunday. “On Sundays, Twain skipped work to relax with his wife and children, read, and daydream in some shady spot on the farm,” Mason Currey writes in Daily Rituals: How Artists Work.

Author Malcolm Gladwell likes to read his paper over eggs and tea, but never pancakes. He finds them terryifying for some reason.

3. They go to brunch

Super successful people love a good brunch. Martha Stewart is known to throw some great ones.

4. They play with their kids

Twitter cofounder Biz Stone said in the new book My Morning Routine: How Successful People Start Every Day Inspired, “I’ve been playing with my son upon waking up since he was born. My routine has changed very little since he came along.”

5. They take thinking breaks

Business magnate Elon Musk wrote in a Tweet, “Need to have long uninterrupted times to think. Can’t be creative otherwise.”

Virgin Group founder Richard Branson also agrees with this school of thought. “Open your calendar and schedule time just to dream.”

6. They work out

Working out is a big part of most successful people’s weekend routines. The benefits of exercise when you have a stressful job have been reported on obsessively.

In addition to helping with stress relief and giving you more energy, exercise boosts your cognitive functioning and improves your memory. Former Vanguard chairman Bill McNabb aims to fit in a midday workout three or four times a week. Jack Dorsey is all about the 7-minute workouts from wherever he is as he doesn’t belong to a gym. Tim Cook enjoys biking and hiking on the weekends.

7. They go off the grid

Though some people love to be on social media all weekend, others totally check out. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg turns off her email on weekday nights and for parts of the weekend also.

8. They prep their meals for the next week

Sundays are a great time to prep your meals for the whole next week (especially work salads). Cameron Diaz, actress and co-founder of Avaline Wine, is known to cook up a storm on Sunday to prep for her week. “In my house, on Sundays, you can usually find me in the kitchen getting my food ready for the week,” Diaz writes in her book, The Body Book. “I tell my friends that I can’t meet for lunch; I tell my nieces and nephews that if they want to hang out, it will have to be at my house. I make sure not to have any meetings or calls scheduled during that time, because that time is SO IMPORTANT for me.”

9. They go on strategy walks

Some combine exercise with brainstorming like Dia&Co CEO Nadia Boujarwah. She told Business Insider that she and her cofounder, “Almost every weekend we go on a long walk, most often down the West Side highway, and spend a couple hours outside, thinking about bigger-picture questions. Some of the more creative thinking happens then.”

10. They do yoga

Yoga differs from normal exercise because of the meditation component. Stanton Kawer, CEO and chairman of Blue Chip Marketing Worldwide, explained in his article for Forbes that, “Yoga helps make me a more effective CEO by reorienting my outlook on life—my buoyancy of spirit. I spend 90 minutes in a studio feeling like a 10-year-old boy. How could I not have fun? I am doing the real work of building muscles and increasing my agility, but with poses with Sanskrit names like Surya Namaskar or equally fun English names like Warrior. I begin in tadasana, or mountain pose, as I set my intention, and I end up in savasana, or corpse pose, allowing my mind and body to clear out from a period of extreme labor.”

11. They indulge in food

Bravo executive and TV personality Andy Cohen works out a lot but he also loves to indulge. Some of his favorite cheats include Reese’s peanut butter cups, chocolate chip cookies, and dark chocolate. He also likes an omelet on the weekend.

12. They drink a lot of coffee

Even though it’s the weekend, Alex Rodriguez still needs his NINE cups of coffee before his daily workout.

13. They practice their hobbies

Warren Buffett can be found playing his ukulele on the weekend and Meryl Streep enjoys knitting.

14. They get spiritual

Ryan Williams, the CEO of Cadre, regularly attends church on Sundays. “It’s something that’s pretty meaningful to me, spirituality. It’s nice to be able to disconnect from the professional side of things and put things into perspective.”

15. They work

Author Gretchen Rubin saves certain tasks for the weekend. “One hour working on non-recurrent, non-urgent tasks — the kinds of little jobs that drag me down, but never get done,” she says. “I’ve found that something that can be done at any time is often done at no time, so I use ‘Power Hour’ to order a new office chair, fix my shredder, make a photo album from my last year of photos, etc.”

Gretchen Rubin. Photo: Heather Moore (2019)

16. They read

Rubin also makes time for books. “I have something called ‘Study Time,’ when I spend an hour doing ‘study’ reading. That means reading a book that’s not for work, but something that I just want to read.”

17. They get up super early

Many super successful people like Ellevest CEO Sallie Krawcheck do not sleep in, even on the weekends. Melody McCloskey, founder and CEO of StyleSeat, trained herself to be a morning routine and now rises at 5:45 AM most days. “Of course it wasn’t easy at first,” she told CNBC. “It was torture getting up that early; I was never naturally a morning person. But now it’s become routine, and I wake up pretty early on weekends too.”

18. They go running

Bear Grylls, the host of Man vs. Wild had to run regularly as part of his military training but now he just does it for pleasure. “‘Now I really enjoy running,” he told Runner’s World. “We live in a pretty hilly area in North Wales, and I run three times a week for about 40 minutes as part of my training.”

19. They make a big breakfast

The weekends are not about rushing and sticking a protein bar in your mouth. Talk show host and actress Kelly Ripa told The Cut, “I make a nice big breakfast. We have stuff we don’t normally eat — pancakes, bagels, that kind of stuff. ”

20. They look at art

Tim Gunn spends his weekends looking at beautiful art. He told The New York Times that he spends every Sunday at the Metropolitan Museum and is pretty much the last one to leave. “I’m a huge lover of art. I go to the Greek and Roman galleries first. I’ll choose different objects to fixate upon. A trip to the Met can be very emotional. There are paintings there that just lift me off the ground. I feel buoyant.”

mark cuban — Mark Cuban. Photo: Kobby Dagan/Shutterstock

21. They spend time with their kids

Mark Cuban said the weekend is all about family time. He even gives the nanny the weekend off.

22. They take baths

Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, says she takes a bath every night. “I take a bath every single night. I’ve done it my entire life,” Blakely said. “I pretty much always light a candle. I sit in the bath for usually five or ten minutes.” Added bonus: a study published in 2020, by the journal Heart, suggests that a daily hot bath is associated with reduced risk for cardiovascular disease and strokes.

23. They dance

Branson said in an interview with The Telegraph he likes to cut loose on Friday nights with a little dancing. It helps when you have your own private Caribbean island that comes with its own band.

Warren Buffett

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