6 Ways to Simplify Your Schedule (for the Summer or Any Other Time of the Year)

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by Susan McCarthy

The lazy days of summer? I find my days a little fuller in the summer because my garden (which I can ignore for months during New England winters) needs cleaning, weeding, planting, and watering. I even devote more time to feeding the birds in the spring and summer than in the winter since I live along a river and get a lot more summer visitors raising the noisy young.

My focus, for a few months, turns to the outdoors – along with tending the garden, the porch and patio needs sweeping and dusting, so they are ready for guests invited to a dinner from the grill. Of course, none of the tasks, chores, and errands that get done on a regular basis throughout the year go away. 

When your days feel like one long to-do list, it is possibly to simplify your schedule.

Go with the Flow

At any time of the year you may find your days busier. Holidays. Visitors. Guests. Minor illnesses. Seasonal changes. Work schedule. Family obligations. Home repairs. And on.

I’m not talking about long-term changes – a new child, marriage or divorce, a move, a serious illness – but changes that will occupy a few days or weeks. In some cases, these temporary disruptions to your days can feel more annoying because you feel like you should be able to squeeze in everything that you’re used to doing plus the additional commitments.

You don’t have to.

Take a deep breath and accept that you can’t do everything right now. Creating balance in your life isn’t about squeezing everything into every day.

Instead, it’s about acknowledging that at different times different things and activities will be more important than at other times. You do this all the time, maybe without thinking about it. You know a project at work will take up most of your attention for the next three months and so other projects get put on hold or get less attention. Decluttering and renovating your basement into a family room means that you say “no” to some casual get-togethers because you want to project done. 

Tweak Your Schedule

Tweaking your schedule involves making small changes to your days. Maybe for a week you’ll host out-of-town guests. Maybe you come down with the flu and you need to set aside your regular workouts. During the holidays, you rearrange some furniture or décor so you can accommodate holiday displays.

You lean your attention in one direction for a while and then later tilt in another direction to focus on something else.
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1. Identify your goal. What’s most important for this day, week, or month?
2. Determine for how long you’ll be adjusting your focus. This help put things in perspective and can lower stress. You aren’t talking about a permanent change, but one that will last for ten days.
3. Lower your expectations. I know during the summer that I want to focus more on my garden and less on dusting and vacuuming my home. My house will end up messier in the summer, but I’ve decided I’d rather spend time outdoors.
4. Avoid backsliding into chaos by focusing on maintaining the order you have with actions like a ten-minute tidy-up and the seventeen other tips you can find in my eBook Why Can't You Stay Organized?
5. Follow your schedule when you can. Schedules and routines save you from thinking about what to do and when to do it. Even if you can’t stick to everything, following mealtimes, your meditation practice or exercise routine means that you’ll feel that you still have some control over your day.
6. Decide what you’ll relegate to another day or even another month. You don’t have to engage in everything all the time. Maybe you knit during the winter, garden in the spring and summer, and hike in the autumn. During the summer you vacuum once a month instead of once a week.

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All this comes down to reducing your need for perfectionism and accepting good enough. Neat enough. Clean enough. Busy enough. Decide what is most important to focus on right now and realize that in another week, you can tweak your focus to what will be most important to you then.

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