Dearest gentle readers,

Happy Friday in the midst of the summer. I hope you have allowed July to be good to you so far. Having grown up in Durban where we did not really have seasons (well okay we did - one was sun-with-lots-of-rain, and the other was sun-without-rain), I’ve been delighted to get to know the seasons here in Boston. And summer really can be beautiful. This is the power of gratitude practices - same world, very different experience. Sometimes (for those of us who need a little extra help), the contrast helps us to see and truly live in the present moment.

Summertime unfortunately can also be a time when work pressures can get worse. Fear of missing out (FOMO) can be intense as you think you “see” everyone (everyone on social media at least) having perfect vacations. The time available for your own work and collaborating well with others can actually shrink as more people are away, or there are more invitations and events for you (that you’d love to get to if only …).

And we rarely do the work to reset our own expectations of what we might accomplish, and so use our unfortunately-too-good skills of maintaining cognitive dissonance - this time imagining that we can have more time off, while not resetting our own (or our bosses or colleagues) expectations of what is possible. And if you are doing something you love, and can’t wait to share with the world, you need the summer to also be high performance. So what can you do?

First, the good news: you don’t HAVE to do anything

Doing what you have always done will, probably, get you a summer like the last one - which, I suspect, had some wonderful days. Some days when you kicked back. Some days you were “forced” to go on a family vacation/obligation, and still enjoyed it and found it refreshing (at least some of the time). You survived, and made it to this summer.

So the baseline is probably more than okay. It might even be good. So you got this already. Take the rest as bonus, not must-do.

The power move

Spend a little time defining what your “best days of summer” mean to you.

Most people, myself included, often think about this in very binary terms. A best day of summer means completely off. Not a care in the world. Toes in the water, or the sand, or the grass.

That’s one kind of best day (and I do hope you have many of them). But it isn’t the only one.

If you are lucky enough to do work you are passionate about - work you can’t wait to bring into the world - then some of your best summer days might look quite different. A morning of solid deep work where you get into flow on a problem that actually matters. Real progress on something you’ve been tackling for weeks. A clean shutdown. Then a long afternoon and evening, fully present, with people you love, or bathing in nature.

That can become one of your definitions of a best day of summer. I’m not asking you to define the best day of summer. That would be only one. I’m asking you to think creatively about how most of your days this summer could become some of your best days. I think you know lots of creative ways of doing this, you just need to unlock your thinking about there being only one.

So spend a little time thinking about more than one kind of “best days of summer”.

I write mine in my adventure story in MakeTimeFlow, but you can write it anywhere (paper works great too):

Start a new summer adventure story for this summer (I recommend ending it at Sept 15) and think about some of the following elements:

• “This was an intense but really great summer from July to Sept 15 because I was able to …”
• “Some of the kinds of best days of summer for me included …”
• “I am so grateful I planned for and prepared to return well so I started September recharged, energized and ready to go. I did this by blocking out enough time to return well, and …”

A few other summer super-powers

Let summer be a creative constraint.

The instinct for most of us is to let summer work be loose. Sure, do it for a little while, but to get the most out of your summer, I’d argue spend most of your time doing the opposite. Use it as a creative constraint to hone your prioritization and focus, and win an amazing summer.

Basecamp does this at a company level. They change their work hour expectations in the summer to 32-hour, 4 day work weeks from May through August. Sure, it’s a company policy, and we don’t all control company policy, but it’s helpful for you to know their reasons why, and if you have any power to do so, likely worth advocating for something in your own organization. Their reasons are:

• summer hours hone prioritization - they are not cramming 40 hours into 32, this forces you to prioritize what matters and let the rest go.
• summer hours energize, recharge and surprisingly help with more connection - sharing what you love to do helps teams connect
• summer hours are special - they are seasonal and so special allowing you to savor them, and they found when they return to “normal hours” it feels like a luxury of time.

If you need to work and travel - do it well.

If your work is portable and your deep work practices are solid, you and the people you love don’t have to be in the same place all summer for you to get real work done. But if you do travel with others and need to do work, do it well - or it will sour the trip for you and for them.

Here’s what’s worked for me:

Don’t work where everyone else is on holiday. Yes, it seems like it would make it easy, but you send a constantly confusing signal - I’m here, but I’m also working. You will not be able to work effectively, others will interrupt you, and you and they will feel bad about it. Find somewhere else to work. Good spots include a co-working space (there are lots of great options now), a library or your “work-cafe”.

Block the time, say when you’ll be back, and then show up on time. Work when you are in your work-space. Then shut down and be off, fully. It matters enormously that people know that when you are with them, you’re actually with them.

Yes, they will tell you to take your time. Take it as a deadline anyway. Because you staying later and later doing work is a strong signal (intended or not) that it is more important than them. Showing up when you said you would says “I value my time with you” more strongly than anything else you could say. If you’re going to run late, call, apologize, and give a real time.

Define, and defend some “completely off” time. Yes, from your boss and colleagues, but also from yourself. Hone your prioritization and expectation-setting skills with this challenge. Give yourself the gift of your future self for some of what needs to be done (i.e. give some of the work to your future self). Timeblock your return, and the completion of what can be done after you get back so you have time to do it well. Without this you would stress about it. Then shutdown completely. This is good for you, and it’s good for almost every team I’ve ever seen.

Back in Durban I took those sunny days for granted. The gift of seasons is that they change, and that helps us notice what is special about each. Stories can do this for you, stories with beginnings and endings you decide on, and with lots of different ways your days can be some of your best days.

I hope most of the days of this summer are your best days.

Yours in flow,

Narath.

PS: How Jarvis is coming along (and being a great help in the summer ;-))

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about and made a video about building my own Jarvis - the assistant that reads my email at 7:00, 12:30 and 4:30 so that I mostly don’t have to, and that guards my mornings for deep work. It has come a long way since then. The MakeTimeFlow AI agent connection has gotten a lot of love, and there’s a flow Claude plugin that is ready to go.

I would like to walk five people through setting up their own, personally. Not a demo - a working setup, tuned to how you actually work, so you have it for the rest of this summer and beyond.

If you’d like one of the five, just reply to this email with “Jarvis” and I’ll be in touch.

(You’ll need a MakeTimeFlow account for us to build on - if you’re not on it yet, you can join here first.)