August requires some extra executive function.
Whether you have kids at home or not, these next few weeks can feel like a steep ramp-up. There are new schedules, new routines, new responsibilities. August can be disorienting.
It’s easy to feel yourself bracing for the chaos before it arrives. There’s a low-level anxiety running underneath, which could be blamed on our new puppy, lack of sleep, or shifting schedules.
And even without all of that, I realize I’ve been carrying a transition in my head that I haven’t stopped to look at.
I hear most of us in a similar place right now. Trying to complete summer well, while moving straight to the starting line of fall without slowing for even a minute in between.
You can’t finish well if you don’t create the margin to notice the shift.
Summer wrapped for us with a trip out west. I always come back from a trip having learned something. Travel serves as an opportunity for self-reflection.
Changing seasons are built-in inflection points. A natural place to stop and take stock, whether you use it or not.
I don’t want to rush out of summer.
I want to sit with it long enough to know what I’m carrying into fall.
Reflection gives us information. Answers to questions I hear everyone asking for.
When we skip that, we end up flying by the seat of our pants. We miss things. We react to whatever’s loudest instead of choosing what matters.
That’s not leading, that’s reacting.
The difference between the two can be as simple as a change in posture. Moving from “I’m so behind” to “I’m motivated to figure this out.” Same facts, different perspectives.
A friend of ours with a military background does an after-action review after every big moment — a trip, a holiday, an occasion, a season.
It’s a practice the military uses because they learned that experience alone doesn’t make you better. Reviewed experience does.
His process isn’t complicated. After each occasion, he opens the Notes app on his phone, and takes a few minutes to reflect on the moment while it’s fresh. His practice includes four simple questions:
-What was supposed to happen?
-What actually happened?
-What worked?
-What would we change?
Answer these honestly and they’ll tell you about more than just logistics. They’ll show you patterns – where you overcommitted, what actually gave you energy, what you said yes to that you wish you hadn’t.
How would you answer these questions about summer?
And how would those answers change the way you head into fall?
So before things take off, give yourself ten minutes. Sit with the summer before you sprint into the fall. Your last season has something to tell you about how to lead your next one.
With that, here are my top 3 for August:
BOOK:
Remarkably Bright Creatures. I wasn’t sure about the premise when I opened this book, but it’s stolen the hearts of so many that I knew I needed to keep reading. The character development and unlikely friendship between a 70-year-old woman and a giant Pacific octopus, breaks you down until you love it. It’s the perfect summer read if you don’t judge a book by its cover.
PODCAST:
We talk a lot about preparing for hard conversations. It’s one of the top 3 topics I coach around. What I love about this episode is the case that’s made to prepare for all conversations, not just the hard ones. DOAC Steven Bartlett sits down with Alison Wood Brooks, a Harvard professor and behavioral scientist who has spent two decades studying the science of conversation. We can always get better at this. Someone out there wishes you would :).
QUOTE:
You can’t control that August comes at you, you can only decide how you enter it.
Best-selling author and leadership consultant, Greg McKeown, says if you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will. In August, someone else absolutely will. The school calendar, the inbox, the practice schedules, everyone else’s urgent — they’re all standing by, ready to fill your fall for you.
What would you need to know about your last season in order to lead this one?