Summer Productivity – An Oxymoron?

The Best-Laid Plans

Summer is here!  Beautiful, glorious, carefree days.  Relaxation.  Catching Up.  Deep, rejuvenating breathing.

Summer is here!  Stressful, regret-filled, unaccomplished days.  Lethargy.  Beating myself up.  Confused, unfocused thinking.

The paradoxes of summer!  

As a teacher, I treasure the flexibility that June, July, and August offer. The number of options to tackle the tasks at hand according to my own schedule is a blessing. 

The end of May finds me excitedly looking ahead as the summer stretches before me with unlimited potential.  I confidently state my annual resolution: “This WILL be the year I will proudly look back upon my summer productivity!”

But…I’ve taken enough trips around the sun to recognize that intentions often fail to transfer to accomplishments, especially in the absence of routine.  The blessing of setting my own schedule to get things done easily becomes a curse.  

To make the most of the allotted time, productivity gurus might advise making a to-do list.  Makes sense.

Big Plans

So, here is my full-of-idealism beginning-of-summer to-do list:

• Revamp my curriculum
• Plan all units in detail
• Write all new exams
• Create meaningful learning activities with optimized use of technology
• Clean all closets in my home
• Get rid of all nonessential items
• Meal plan for the next school year
• Make 30 freezer meals that can be pulled out for busy school nights
• Read at least 3 professional development books
• Broaden my teaching knowledge by reading at least 3 books related to my curriculum and students
• Enjoy at least 5 books just for fun
• Complete the majority of my Christmas shopping
• Create and maintain beautiful and abundant flower and vegetable gardens
• Exercise 5 or more times a week
• Lose 25 pounds
• Make 3 quilts
• Catch up on all the recorded episodes of my favorite shows
• Write a minimum of a blog post a week
• Outline the book I want to write and get a good start on it
• Devote one day a week to quality family time
• Have several husband/wife date nights
• Enjoy a fabulous family vacation
• Catch up on sleep
• Enjoy the relaxing, stress-free, “nothing-to-do” days of summer

Completely doable, right? Summer productivity, here I come!

Scaled-Down Plans

And then the middle of June arrives, and my thought process goes something like this: 

“Wow, those first few weeks went fast.  Okay, I haven’t done too much yet, but I deserved some time just to do nothing and recover.  No big deal.  Still plenty of time to check off most of the items on my list of summer intentions. 

My units might not have every detail laid out, but I have randomly wandered through educational websites and broadened my thinking and gotten some great ideas.  I’ll have the basic skeleton of the year’s roadmap so it will be easy to flesh out as I go. 

Most of my closets will get cleaned, and I’d hate to be hasty and get rid of too many things I might need sometime in the future anyway.  Meal-planning will come, and at least a few dishes will be prepared and frozen. 

For sure, I’ll start exercising tomorrow, and that still gives me time to drop a size before August.  There’s a book or several on the stack that aren’t that critical to read right now. 

As for Christmas gifts, I’ll keep watching for good sales. 

July works better than June for planning quality family time.  I will complete a sewing project; there’s plenty of time to write; my shows aren’t going anywhere. 

A good chunk of summer and its opportunities still lie ahead – I’ve got this!!”

Summer Plans? I Meant July Plans.

Then the Fourth of July arrives, the more or less halfway mark of summer vacation, and my anxiety dramatically increases.

“Have I really accomplished so little?  Just think positively – half of the summer remains.  And, you know, detailed curriculum planning can be a waste of time, anyway, because you never know what the school year will bring or what individual students will need. 

I’ll go through the one or two main closets in my home; the rest aren’t that important.  Freezer meals made too early wouldn’t last until the school year, so it’s best to wait ’til the latter part of summer to focus on those. 

I’ll find a 30-days-to-a-healthier-you plan; no doubt I can still make a noticeable change. 

I can devote a couple of weekends to attacking the book stack and watching a few episodes.  I’ll at least jot down a good list of Christmas gift ideas. 

We can surely find some fairs and activities for family fun later in July.  I’ll have more to write about once we have had more summer experiences. 

Six weeks is still a decent amount of time to accomplish great things!”

New Plans

And then, like the guest who “surprises” you by showing up early before you had a chance to vacuum or clean the kitchen, August barges on in with a painful smack of reality.  

“Seriously, what happened to June and July?  No problem, as long as my first unit is planned well, I’ll be able to stay ahead throughout the school year.  My lessons weren’t so horrible in previous years, right? 

Who really cares how clean a closet is?  No one sees them except me.  Freezer meals?   Frozen pizza is technically a freezer meal. 

Good thing I’m still the same size and shape as last year so I don’t need to buy new clothes for school. 

I don’t know what interested me about some of the books in the first place, so I’ll remove them from the stack.  I barely remember what was happening in my favorite show, so I’ll just delete those unwatched episodes and maybe catch reruns someday. 

Nothing wrong with the flexibility of gift cards as Christmas gifts, right? 

Some of the best family memories come from lazy unproductive days, so I think I’ve heard somewhere. 

Sewing?  Who sews anymore anyways. On the bright side, now I can write a blog post about my lack of summer productivity.  

Change of Plans

Obviously, there’s more to this than just making a to-do list.

Those same productivity gurus (This one has some good advice) might recommend limiting the to-do list to what you can reasonably expect to accomplish.  

OK – what do I reasonably expect to accomplish?

• Spend way too many hours “researching” teaching ideas on the internet
• Save good ideas somewhere on the computer intending to go back to them later
• Forget where ideas are saved, or that they ever existed in the first place, and never use them
• Set an alarm each day to get up and exercise
• Turn off that very rude alarm and go back to sleep
• Find an “easy-to-stick-to” healthful eating plan
• Go to DQ for a Double Fudge Cookie Dough Blizzard
• Buy fabric for a quilt
• Allow fabric to sit untouched for years
• Pull everything out of a closet
• Get rid of a few items
• Before company comes, shove everything back in the closet
• Go to the mall/Target/Kohl’s/WalMart/Amazon.com to find Christmas gifts
• Buy unneeded stuff for self and not a single gift
• Tell the family that we need to plan meaningful activities
• Lounge around together while watching quality shows such as “Holey Moley” and “Crime Scene Kitchen”
• Make sure to always have a book along
• Appreciate the knowledge that if I did decide to read that as of yet uncracked book, it would be the one day it was left at home

I’ll be checking things off this list left and right!

Plan to Plan Differently

Perhaps I need to dive deeper into what the so-called experts say if I expect to improve upon my summer productivity.

You know, I would, but that plan of action, of course, would involve spending countless hours browsing hundreds of websites and scoffing at “no-fail” ideas that are certain to result in failure for me.  Hours that would otherwise no doubt be spent cleaning a closet or drafting a book!  

Yes, I know, there is an art to to-do lists. Break tasks up into small, manageable tasks; find the medium that works for you; shorter lists are better than long; plan for breaks; etc., etc., etc. 

I’ll add “Make an effective to-do-list” to my to-do list.  I’ll tackle that item as soon as I complete my 3rd quilt of the summer.

Today’s Plan – Figure Out the Point of This Post

OK, before I lose all of your respect, I may be exaggerating a bit about my lack of summer productivity.   It is not as though I spend every day lying around doing absolutely nothing.

The truth remains, though, that accomplishing all the tasks that would be nice to have checked off the list by the end of August just does not happen.   

But that’s OK, right? Right?

Honestly, productivity is not indicated simply by the number of items checked off of a list. Most of those to-dos are far from life-or-death activities; life will go on whether they are completed or not.

Time is a gift from God, and he has given us great freedom in choosing how to spend the moments of our lives.

He does provide guidance for us, however. That is worth a post of its own, so I will write a part two to this post, and I will make that a priority for the week.