Best Results Organizing

When I was a child, each July 4th as the music in the bandshell would stop and we’d pack up our chairs and blankets to the post-fireworks hubbub of people making their way to their cars, my father would always say the same thing. 

As Independence Day would ebb away, he’d say, “Well, it’s the 4th of July. Summer’s over.”

And this would always annoy Paper Mommy.

It didn’t make sense. In New York State where we lived, school had usually only let out about two weeks earlier. Summer didn’t even officially begin of June 21st, and wouldn’t end until the third week of September. How could summer be over?

As an adult (and likely to Paper Mommy‘s dismay), I understand what my father was getting at. We all struggle through dark, dismal winters of our lives (literally and figuratively), holding out for the bright energy of the summer. I contend that it’s not spring we ever really eagerly anticipate. Springtime is rainy and windy; it contains the misery of April 15th and paying taxes, and after all, as T. S. Eliot said, April is the cruelest month.

But as May is ushered in, we finally get warm weather. Early graduations, while signaling the end of schooling, also bring new beginnings. And though the holiday is meant to pay tribute to those who died in service of protecting our nation and democracy, Memorial Day is nonetheless the marker we all use to signal the first real refresh of our lives and plans since New Year’s Day.

January 1st puts us on notice (or has us put the world on notice) that we have the power to make changes in who we are. Of course, we experience these changes every day, and don’t need holidays or permission to make ourselves new, as I wrote in Organizing A Fresh Start: Catalysts for Success.

And remaking ourselves and renewing our outlooks doesn’t have to take the shape of a resolution, as I’ve shared for many years, most recently in Review & Renew for 2022: Resolutions, Goals, and Words of the Year. 

That said, we’re five full months into the year, and we may not have accomplished what we’d hoped. June is still a few days away, but if we’re not careful, if we’re not intentional, July 4th will be here in the blink of an eye. The week after the July 4th holiday is usually spent recovering from either revelry or obligatory travel to relatives. The heat of the summer builds up and our motivation wears down, and then suddenly it’s August.

For European friends and colleagues, life comes to a stop in August and entire nations turn their backs on toxic productivity and go on holiday. On this side of the Atlantic, we trudge on, working on what we must and shocked at the brevity of weekends when there’s fun to be had at barbecues and pool parties. And then there’s a shocking moment when someone asks what we’re doing for the holiday and Labor Day is one flip-of-the-calendar away!

To Paper Mommy‘s chagrin, my father was right. By the time the smoky scent of the fireworks retreats on July 4th, it’ll be a merely blink, two at most, and summer will be over.

But it doesn’t HAVE to be that way. We can take our summer back. We have 98 days from Memorial Day to Labor Day. What if we make a pact to make some of our plans, perhaps even actual dreams, come true?

UNDERSTAND WHY THE SUMMER DISAPPEARS SO QUICKLY

Way back in March 2020, in Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? 5 Strategies to Cope With Pandemic Time Dilation, I talked about how the oddness of the COVID lockdown made us lose track of time. I compared it to how in the first few days of a vacation, we’re hyper-aware of the strange stillness of not abiding by our usual and strict minute-by-minute schedules. But by a while into the vacation, we let our guards down and allow ourselves to drift off into the seductive haziness of having too few obligations.

If your work has “summer Fridays” or your kids don’t have scheduled activities (camp or lessons or clubs), you likely know what it’s like when summer makes your schedule feel more amorphous. Mealtimes, bedtimes, worktimes…summer time, in general, lacks structure.

When we aren’t careful about adding structure, we sink. (And while most TV-viewing GenXers have been shocked by how little literal quicksand we encounter in our 21st-century lives, we’ve nonetheless found that summer, like a mini-version of our early pandemic lives, causes us to sink into a malaise.)

MAKE YOUR SUMMER SCHEDULE SERVE YOUR GOALS

What I said in Struggling To Get Things Done? Paper Doll’s Advice & The Task Management & Time Blocking Virtual Summit 2022 is still apt. While much of that advice was envisioned for accomplishing things when there’s too much going on in your life, it’s surprisingly useful when the summer’s vagueness and low expectations melts our brains and our aspirations.

1) Put structure in your life. 

Create daily rituals so you have a real sense of the start and end of your workday, and develop buffer habits so your brain gets the same benefits of a commute even if you’re walking around the block instead of driving to work while listening to your favorite podcast.

Time block to create boundaries in your day. By blocking off specific times in your schedule for overarching categories (passive work projects, creative/active work projects, self-care, self-education, entertainment) you’re guaranteeing that there’s a place in your schedule for each. Knowing this gives you a sense of security, a system upon which you can depend. 

Someday is not a day on the calendar. Whether you schedule 15 minutes in the morning or two hours on each weekend day or a chunk of time on Tuesdays and Thursdays, nothing gets done unless you assign a place for a task or behavior to live (in your schedule). For help, revisit:

Playing With Blocks: Success Strategies for Time Blocking Productivity

Highlights from the 2023 Task Management & Time Blocking Summit

Surprising Productivity Advice & the 2023 Task Management & Time Blocking Summit

2) Enhance novelty.

During the summer, the weather tends to offer a delightful and dreamy sameness. With the exception of rain, the weather tends to offer little variance. The temperature tends to be the same, daily, and it requires fewer precautions on our part. So, we have to create opportunities for novelty.

If you work from home, especially on days where you don’t have to Zoom into a meeting, work at least a few hours a day from a different venue. Set up on the patio or your balcony before the day gets too hot. A friend often posts a photo of his laptop balanced on his outstretched legs in a hammock! Even moving to a different area in your house with a different view from the window can refresh your energy and give you the spark to tackle new opportunities.

Don’t stop with work. Make a point of eating different foods the usual, and consider dining al fresco in your backyard. Without a lot of advanced effort or admin, invite friends over to picnic after dinner without planning. They bring their meal, you eat yours, and maybe you share, but the point of the conviviality (beyond the loveliness of their company) is doing something different.

Author Laura Vanderkam‘s Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters, has a good handle on overcoming the sameness of our days.

As a result of her research on the tracked time use of 150 of her study participants, Vanderkam posits that to get out of the ruts our lives inevitably fall into, we need more novelty, texture, and richness in our time and our tasks.

I’ve talked about Vanderkam’s nifty idea before. She encourages people to identify one “big adventure” (lasting perhaps half a weekend day) and one “little adventure” (lasting an hour) each week to introduce novelty. Why? As Vanderkam noted, “We don’t ask where did the time go when we remember where the time went.” 

3) Create vivid sensory clues for the passing of time!

You’ve heard this from me before. Go analog!

Digital time just doesn’t provide the same sense of the passage of time as analog wristwatches and clocks. You don’t have to chuck everything out, though.

Identify which of your digital clocks you can change to an analog appearance.

• Car — This weekend, I couldn’t figure out why my car was playing a podcast over Bluetooth when my phone was plugged into the charger. (Short answer: the charging cable worked fine for charging but decided not to be helpful for CarPlay. Apparently, that’s a thing that happens.) But while I was trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with CarPlay, I tapped on literally every function on my Kia’s screen. And I learned that the default screen has ALL SORTS of different display options, just like you can change the wallpaper on your phone. And one of those options let me me change the default screen to an analog one.
• Trackers — For example, my FitBit has multiple clock faces, from plain digital to an avant guard look to a lovely, old-fashioned analog clock face.
• Phones — Android phones allow you to change your lock screen from digital to analog easily. Things are a little murkier on the iPhone; the clock app icon is a working analog clock (Yes, really! Watch the red second hand sweep the clock face), but the lock screen stays digital. Sigh. 

Invite physical analog clocks into your space to make the passage of time more visible and real, and shake up your relationship with time.

4) Remember self-care! 

It’s no secret that I’m not a morning person, but it’s only been in the past few years that I’ve learned that our bodies need daylight in order to set our internal clocks to that we’re able to sleep at night. (This explains so much!) So, while there’s more daylight in the summer, it does you no good if you’re stuck inside your office or home and toiling away, missing it. 

At work, your fellow staffers may take advantage of smoke breaks. (Ugh.) That’s paid break time of which you may never have availed yourself. So try it. No, don’t smoke (seriously, don’t), but take the break time and go outside. Here are some good moments to take a fresh-air-and-sunshine break:

• When you’ve come out of a meeting
• If you’ve just finished a virtual call on Zoom or Meet or Teams
• When you make three mistakes in a row. Everybody makes booboos, but if you mis-speak three times, or get confused about a concept, or just have a series of oopsies, that’s a sign that your brain is getting fuzzy and you need to refresh.
• If you’re angry, frustrated, hurt, or disappointed. There’s a reason the “Taking a stupid walk for my stupid mental health” TikTok trend has become so popular. It works!
• When you’ve just finished a chunk of deep work. Whether you’ve done a series of 25-minute pomodoros and are ready for a longer break, or you’ve tried the 52/17 Method and you’re ready for 17 minutes of sunlight, get the heck away from your desk. (More more on this, re-read Frogs, Tomatoes, and Bees: Time Techniques to Get Things Done.)

You also need sleep (aim for multiples of 90 minutes, so try 7 1/2 or 9 hours rather than your usual eight) to make sure you’re getting complete REM cycles.

Remember exercise. Whether it’s gentle yoga or power cardio, your body needs strong muscles, flexibility, and stamina.

Hydration and good nutrition are also essential. And no, this isn’t a wellness blog. But all of these things require good organization and management of your time. Set an alarm on your smartwatch or use an app to remind you to drink water. 

5) Take a Technology Break, or a Few 

Our dependence on technology can prevent us from noticing the real world all around us and the passage of time. I’m not saying to send letters by carrier pigeon instead of using email or scribbling numbers on the wall instead of using a spreadsheet. (Though it might be neat to receive a letter via the Owl Postal Service in the Harry Potter books!) But consider some options for reducing your dependence on tech when it’s not serving your productivity needs.

Keep the phone out of your bedroom. You’ll be less likely to doom scroll into the wee hours, and the blue light of your device won’t wreck your ability to fall and stay asleep.

When you do wake up, don’t grab your phone right away. Instead, do something intentional that will help you achieve your goals for making these hazy, crazy days of summer something more productive (or relaxing or dream-fulfilling). Why not:

• Meditate or explore silent devotion?
• Read a few pages of a real book?
• Visualize your goals for the day and embrace some positive affirmations?
• Get moving? Do some yoga stretches, go for a brisk walk, or do a short workout, or any tiny movement that won’t feel like labor but a nice blip of activity!

Start your day calmly and in control so you have a much better chance of achieving whatever it is you’d like to do with your summer.

When you’re working (or playing), keep your phone in your drawer or your bag. You’ll be distracted and interrupted far less often, allowing you to focus on what you’re doing and get into a flow state.

And maybe consider a digital detox where you put your gadgets and gizmos away after a certain time in the evening, or a technology sabbath where you eschew those pings and whooshes and curated feeds for 24 hours a week.

IDENTIFY WHAT YOU WANT TO ACCOMPLISH THIS SUMMER

Only you know what you want to achieve this summer. Once you’ve got an overarching goal, you can consider how you’ll implement it in small, manageable ways.

Write a book? If you do want to write a book, check out the sixth year of acclaimed author Jami Attenberg‘s 1000 Words of Summer challenge. It provides accountability and motivation for getting a jump start on your writing. And maybe you could follow it up in November with NaNoWriMo?

[Editor’s note: Jami’s series of challenges led to the 2024 release of 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round

Get in shape? Pick just one thing. If you’re intrinsically motivated, block time to swim in the morning before work instead of scrolling social media and hitting your snooze alarm, or after work to give your brain a complete refresh before having a “part 2” of your day. If you need external  motivation and support, explore joining a summer workout program. Many cities and communities have outdoor sponsored by the Parks & Recreation departments for free or at minimal costs, and it’s less pressure (and cost) than joining a gym.

Maybe you don’t even know what you want to do this summer, but you just know you want this summer to be different and not whoosh by in a series of passing strangers on the street and saying, “Hot enough for you?” over and over. Peruse these posts for ideas:

102 Summer Goals That Are Perfect For Overthinkers

31 Best Summer Goals to Set This Season (2023)

45 Summer Goals: A List to Set for 2023

25 Summer Goals to Make the Most of the Season

Your summer plan doesn’t have to be a big thing. It doesn’t have to be a thing at all. Not everything has to be a big enough deal to make your family’s holiday newsletter. You could decide to eat more seasonal produce (rather than letting it turn to glop in the back of your fridge).

(I don’t know why this man needed so many bananas, but I applaud his enthusiasm!)

Maybe decide to set aside your spare change all summer and then donate it to charity…or splurge on something fabulous Labor Day weekend. (I won’t judge!) You could even strive to do some the things you missed out on during COVID, whether that’s seeing your favorite band on tour or traveling to a far-flung place.

Maybe you want to spend more time with your children to build memories, or have more quality time with your Significant Other or your BFF (not that your best friend isn’t also extremely significant)! Follow Laura Vanderkam’s suggestion and plot out big and little adventures for the summer weeks. By Labor Day, you’ll have stacked up a series of adventures that will make the summer memorable.

FIND A PARTNER

As I mentioned briefly in Paper Doll To the Rescue: How To Save Wet Books & Documents, a few summers ago, after a lifetime of trying (and failing) to read Anna Karenina, I partnered with my college friend and pre-COVID traveling buddy to read the book together. She’s a pediatrician in Upstate New York; I’m a Paper Doll in Tennessee. But through email and texts and phone calls, we were able to explore the characters and how we interpreted their behaviors through a modern lens. (Honestly, we gossiped about them as if they were Grey’s Anatomy characters. Just very, very Russian.)

We’ve decided to do it again, knowing we’re less likely to give up at a boring point if we’re doing this together. We agreed on reading another classic — we’re both fans of Jane Austen, but I already reread all six novels annually, and we wanted something new to both of us. I suggested Middlemarch, but she’s anti-George Eliot due to an unfortunate high school Silas Marner experience. She countered with Frankenstein, and while I appreciate Mary Shelley’s under-appreciated talents, I’ve read it before and it’s a downer.

And that’s how we ended up starting reading Vanity Fair this weekend. Mr. Thackeray, do your darnedest!

Having a partner in crime is always a great way to stick to your goals, large or small. As a reminder, you’ll find lots of suggestions for getting support and accountability in:

Paper Doll Sees Double: Body Doubling for Productivity

Count on Accountability: 5 Productivity Support Solutions

Flow and Faux (Accountability): Productivity, Focus, and Alex Trebek

ESTABLISH BENCHMARKS AND CELEBRATE  YOUR SUCCESS!

Whatever you want to do this summer, whether it’s a big, honking deal or just a plan to find more time for your bliss, formally noticing that you’ve made strides toward your goal is a great way to honor your effort (and your magnificence).

Formally noticing that you've made strides toward your goal is a great way to honor your effort (and your magnificence). Share on X

Whether you choose to notice your successes by posting updates on social media or just calling your mother (or my mother — she’s great for building up confidence), the point is that you take time to pat yourself on the back and say, “Yay, me!”

Enjoy your summer!

Pulitzer Prize-winning Mary Oliver‘s oft-quoted poem, The Summer Day, has a profound message. After pondering the nature of nature, prayer, and mortality, and debating whether one even knows how to do what they’ve already been doing all day, the narrator asks with passion and reverence what we might want to ask ourselves as we set forth into the summer:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

You’ve got 98 days. Whatever your answer to the question, go for it!