How to Make the Most of This Summer
By Jeff Whitaker
Summertime, and the livin’ is easy…. or so the song goes. But before you get too comfortable, I want to throw a word of caution your way. Don’t blink. Summer is unfolding before us now, and before we know it, it will be September. For those of you who love and live for Summer, I’m not trying to burst your bubble or rain on your parade (heavens knows we’ve already had enough “rain” on our parade this season to last us all year.) Rather, what I’m trying to do is encourage you to be intentional as you move into the season. What do I mean?
If your family is anything like mine, you’re already seeing the calendar begin to fill-up in the days and weeks ahead. The temptation is to just go with the flow and see what happens. But if you do that, you’re more likely to experience the end of Summer regrets. There will be days not spent, time not shared and places not visited. It’s no ones fault. It just happens. One week turns into the next and the next and boom, it’s Labor Day weekend. So, here is what I suggest (I’m going to suggest to my family that we do this as well.)
Take a Time Out – Send out an alert to the family that, as a family we are going to sit down, think about what the Summer looks like from here and have a discussion. Everyone brings their schedule, their hopes, their already planned out events, everything to the table for all to see.
Set up a Calendar – It’s not important what type of calendar you use. It could be digital. It could be a physical calendar or both. But the important thing is to make a calendar that everyone can work from. Then you start to mark off what’s on the agenda already, what is negotiable and what additional things everyone wants to accomplish or experience.
Stay Connected – What I mean is that everyone impacted by the calendar has to stay on the same page. Sure some things will need to be modified, added or deleted. But the important part is that everyone is intentional about keeping each other informed and on track.
I know this all sounds kind of rigid and business like, but if the goal is to make the most out of this Summer of 2018 (and there will only be ONE Summer of 2018), you must be intentional about making it happen.
Let’s all make a pledge to ourselves to be able to look back on this Summer when September rolls around and say with confidence that we made the most of the time we were given.
