How to get ahead for fall before it gets ahead of you

Researchers call the fall months the peak burnout months. Not because people run out of ambition or inspiration. Because everything lands at once. The holidays. The end of year pressure. The family logistics. And underneath all of it — the quiet weight of goals that never quite made it off the back burner.

Sound familiar?

Every year the same thing happens. And every year there is a window most people sleep right through that could have changed all of it. That window is summer. And it is open right now.

What the summer months have to offer

We were conditioned early. Summer means stop. School ends, the pressure lifts, and rest becomes the only acceptable agenda. That conditioning is still running quietly underneath the surface — even now, even for you — making summer feel like the wrong time to do the big things.

But there was always a flip side to summer that was less popular when we were kids but nobody can argue with the results.

Summer school. Condensed, focused, no fluff.

You showed up, you did the work, and you walked out ahead. The pace was different from a regular semester but so was the outcome. Things got done. Clarity arrived faster than expected. And the relief of finishing before fall even started was its own reward.

Summer is more than a slower season. It is the strategic one.

Longer days. Lighter inboxes. A pace that is genuinely more breathable than any other time of year. The noise dials down just enough to finally hear yourself think.

Research confirms what many of us feel but rarely act on — summer light genuinely boosts mood and cognitive energy.

The intense decision making — the organization, research, and design work for my self published photo books — happened in the summer months, which is also during the second busiest season of my photography business. The summer days offered a space and energy no other part of the year has to give.

These decisions deserved the space only summer could offer. It would have been impossible to discern and cultivate the quality of creativity and organization these books demanded during the stacked and demanding fall season. I finalized both books and sent them to the printer in the fall with ease and a lot less to manage because of how far ahead I was in my timeline.

Treating summers differently

Then a few years ago I took this same summer productivity energy and applied it to a passion and purpose I had been circling since 2016. I wanted to further advance my impact on helping others navigate uncertainty. Giving them the tools. Sitting with those who cannot see something clearly and also cannot let it go. Giving space and attention to all of it until it makes sense and the next move unfolds.

In the fall of 2019, after starting a creative business consulting practice a couple of years earlier, I burned out hard and walked away from everything. I turned all my focus back to my photography business. It was a hard lesson to swallow. But the fruits of that lesson brought me back around to it after navigating the uncertainty 2020 brought all of us.

A few years ago I rented a place for the summer at the beach and treated it like a sabbatical. And like I had dedicated summers before to the decision making, planning, creating, and organizing, I did this with the intention to return to my dream. The career direction I kept almost moving toward. Finally making space for it in a season that had room for it.

I knew I would get so much done. I did not know I would name and define the very thing that has now become my life's work.
This is what summers are made for.

When September came I felt it in my whole body. Grounded. Energized. The guesswork already behind me.

The feeling I want for you

With the decisions already made, fall arrived with all of its demands and none of the anxiety of what I would have had to put on the backburner or flirt with burnout again. The heavy lifting was already done. I was not scrambling to start or cramming on top of an already busy life. I was executing what I had already planned with the ease the summer made available.

Picture September. Your foundational plan is already in place. The ideas you have been sitting on are already moving. The decisions that felt heavy and unclear are behind you. Fall shows up with its full plate and you have space for it — because you used your summer.

You probably already know what it would be about. The thing that keeps almost making it onto the calendar. The idea that has been sitting in the back of your mind since January.

This is when things slow down. Right now. This is the window.

Condensed. Focused. Your thing.

All the benefits of summer school — only this time a lot more fun because you have Jenn in your corner working alongside you.