Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Tag: seasons

  • Loving Monday: Wind Down, Wind Up

    loving_mondaySummer comes to its official end with the commencement of the new school year.

    The season of swim lessons, out of town guests, and vacations (even if you didn’t take one) fades as a new cycle of plans, projects and intensity comes into focus.

    This cycle is a good thing. It doesn’t work to be intense all of the time. Energies need to be renewed, refreshed and restored. The relaxed space makes room for new ideas to germinate and hidden stale patterns to become visible.

    Alas, though, it is time to wind down from this season of rest and overlapping vacation schedules.

    Using the calendar to guide our own rhythms of planning, intensity and reflection can be of enormous help. Instead of re-creating the wheel every year, the calendar provides a pre-made structure around which to work. It provides an almost go-with-the-flow component the hard work of strategy, planning and focused effort.

    With school back in session, it is time to wind up. Gather the troops, set priorities, agree on deadlines and standards, and push forward with everything you all have in the way of passion and skill.

    It’s Monday. It’s the Fall season. It’s time to wind down from one season and wind up for the next.

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Loving Monday: The Summer Season

    loving_mondayJust two more weeks of school for my kids. Some of your kids are finished already.

    The summer season requires a number of adjustments in our schedules, approaches and attitudes. The kids are off school. The vacations start picking up in earnest. The traffic patterns themselves change.

    Everyone is affected. Even if you don’t have kids or already went on vacation, the fact that so many others around you do and are will have its impact on you.

    If we have a seasonal approach to the working year, summer adjustments are experienced as an expected acquaintance rather than an abrupt intruder. It’s a matter of perspective. It’s a decision about attitude. Keeping the seasons in mind is a form of preparation.

    You know what to expect when summer arrives and are ready. You have methods for adjusting schedules to accommodate vacations. You know who is away dropping kids off at day camp. You are not thrown off guard by the afternoon telephone calls arbitrating sibling warfare or helping someone deal with their boredom.

    Seasons. Rhythms. They are our reality. The sooner we accept them and work alongside instead of against their flow, the sooner we can find our own productivity rhythm .

    Two more weeks and everything changes. I’m getting ready. Are you?