My 3 Tricks for Using the Fall As a Clean Restart
How I get back on track after the unpredictable, unstructured summer
The summer is over. Kids are going back to school. I walked past a Halloween books endcap at Barnes & Noble on Sunday. Wendy’s is releasing a pumpkin spice Frosty seven years too late. It’s autumn time.
And with the fall comes that moment where many of us look back at our summers and wonder what happened to all the motivation and productivity we had earlier in the year.
In summer we create priceless memories — but generally not a whole lot of output on our side projects.
I did ok this summer. I lost direction for a bit during June, then went on vacation for a while. I’ve been hustling strong since I got back, at least in between a few unlucky illnesses — but I’m still not quite hitting my early 2023 levels.
These are the three techniques I’m using for my fall reboot.
#1 - Revisit my defined goals and plan/scope projects around them
My biggest issue for many years was not having a clearly defined goal toward which I was working. So even as I became better and better at achieving world-class levels of personal productivity, I wasn’t building toward any particular thing.
Now that I finally put an end to my aimlessness and defined a goal, I need to make sure I’m working toward it.
Has everything I’ve been doing around my book publishing endeavor been savvy? Am I focused too much on one area (like, say, endless research on an upcoming series of books) and not enough on others (like, say, getting more things published or marketing plans)? Are the types of books I’m prioritizing the right ones to prioritize?
It’s inevitable, especially when goals have lots of moving parts, that you’ll find you’re not dividing your time properly or that less helpful tasks have wormed their way into your to-do list.
Over the past few weeks, with the help of my weekly accountability group, I’ve re-aligned my efforts with my goals.
Not only does this make me feel more focused and excited about my goals again, but it adds better intention behind the work I’m doing — which is highly motivational. Plus it’s easy to make plans (daily, weekly, and beyond) when work and goals align.
#2 - Build a predictable schedule
I never have two weeks that look the same. There’s always something happening. Always.
But my modal day is predictable.
Yes, next Tuesday I may have to work from a coffee shop all day because they’re temporarily shutting down the power. Or two weeks from Thursday I could have to rework my day around a doctor’s appointment and move some work to the evening. Perhaps three Mondays from now I’ll have to vacate because workers are coming to the house, as we continue to fill up what I hope is a “pay for 99 home improvement projects get the 100th free” card my wife has but didn’t tell me about.
However, most days, especially as the kids return to school and structured activities in the fall, I know what my schedule will look like. Fall is a great time to get back on a mostly regimented, largely predictable schedule.
And with that knowledge, I can plan out my day for the ideal balance of family, career, exercise, relaxation, and my personal projects.
Some days I’ll have to readjust my plans — maybe even on the fly. But most of the time, I’ll have a strong plan going into each day. There’s nothing more useful than that. It allows me to properly budget my time and mental energy to make sure every aspect of life is getting 100% from me.
#3 - Come up a new streak
I love streaks. (NOT habits. There’s a book coming about that topic.)
I find streaks invaluable for getting things done and keeping momentum going on the days when it would be so easy to simply say, “I’m tired, I’ll do it tomorrow.” Because then you say that tomorrow as well. Then the day after. And then weeks, months, and years go by.
But… in my experience, when a streak ends, it can’t be restarted. You’ve already given yourself mental permission to break the streak. With that, the streak loses its power.
So as I wound up losing my daily writing streak in the summer (two, yes, two bouts of completely debilitating strep throat were the culprit), I know I can’t restart it in the same form.
I’m coming up with a new streak for the fall. One that I’m excited about and that will help me get through the days where I’m tired, un-motivated, or otherwise just not in the mood to get things done.
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So those are my tricks to reboot here in the fall. I’m looking forward to riding those out… at least until we hit the Thanksgiving through New Year’s period which once again tends to monkey wrench everything until the January reboot.
To see what I’ve been working on this week in my journey toward 100 books, check out the Work Log.