BY MEANINGSPHERE STAFF
As a kid, summertime felt like freedom. Once June arrived, the long days without school stretched ahead gloriously. For many of us, this time of year meant summer camps, days by the pool, or sleepy family vacations. Back then, summer held the promise of personal reinvention: you might come back to school a bit more worldly thanks to a trip abroad, a bit more independent after a seasonal job, or simply having cut bangs or grown a few inches taller.
How disappointing, by contrast, to experience summer as a working adult. Without the built-in pause created by the end of the school year, summer feels like a straightforward continuation of the year, only hotter. Adult responsibilities may even increase at this time of year, thanks to changes in work and family routines. For many of us, the tranquility, freedom, and transformation we crave are nowhere to be found, and the appeal of the season has evaporated faster than a Slurpee in the sun.
So if finding balance between work and life feels especially difficult this time of year, there are plenty of good reasons why. Here are five of them.
1. You’d rather be outside. It’s really that simple. A long evening at work may not feel so bad when it’s dark and wet outside. In the summer, it can mean missing picnics, swims, hikes, and other chances to bask in the good weather, often while enjoying social time with family and friends. If you live in a place where winters are long and bleak, any missed time outdoors can feel especially precious.
2. Vacations offer relief, but bring a new kind of stress. August is the time of year when many of us take our annual vacations. However, the pressure of planning, preparing for, and saving up for a vacation (often while putting in extra time at work to ensure nothing is amiss while you’re away) can bring its own kind of anxiety. And if you work with others, providing coverage for your colleagues’ vacations may disrupt normal routines and (temporarily!) intensify the workload for the rest of the team.
3. With kids out of school, caregiving demands increase. Remember those carefree childhood summers we were just reminiscing about? For working parents, creating those memorable experiences can come at a personal cost. With kids home from school, coordinating a range of summer enrichment activities (or otherwise finding childcare during work hours) can add to an already full workload.
4. Personal commitments increase across the board—but work commitments remain the same. Even if you don’t have kids, you’ve likely experienced an uptick in social obligations around this time of year. These could be milestones like weddings and graduations, or simply the expectation to visit out-of-town family, participate in community events, or to host or attend gatherings. These gatherings can be wonderful and life-affirming. They can also drain your energy (not to mention your bank account), leaving a less resilient version of you in their wake.
5. Overwork or stigma may prevent you from enjoying summer “flexibility” policies. If you work for an organization, you may enjoy perks aimed at providing more worklife balance in the summer months. A popular example is “Summer Fridays,” a policy allowing employees to work a half day on Friday or even skip it altogether, without sacrificing vacation time. Generally, these arrangements are good news for all involved: There’s plenty of evidence that flexible and compressed work schedules, when implemented correctly, benefit both employers and employees.
But these policies won’t benefit you if you don’t take advantage of them—and many Americans don’t, either due to a high workload that makes the policies meaningless in practice, or due to a belief that using a flexible work policy will make them appear less committed, leading to career consequences. A Harvard paper even came up with a term for this: “perceived usability.”
So, no. If summer feels hard, it’s not just you. Despite its carefree reputation, the season brings a change of routine that can stress your system. But while frustrating, that stress can surface needs, priorities, and values you didn’t know you had.
How summer can prompt reflection
Maybe it has to do with those milestone events, or the way summer travel can unlock new perspectives on what matters to us. Or perhaps it’s missing those things due to a crowded work schedule that forces us to reflect. Either way, this time of year has a way of clarifying what’s important to us. Perhaps the season has some transformation to offer adults, after all.
So as the season comes to a close, take a few minutes with these questions. The goal isn’t a tidy answer, but rather to notice what surprises or moves you and what you might do about it.
1. What did you make time for this summer—and what does that tell you about what matters to you? What do you wish you’d made more time for?
2. If you took a summer vacation, was there anything you actually missed about work? What about what you didn’t miss?
3. When did you feel most energized? What were you doing?
4. What, if anything, did the season teach you about the boundaries you need?
and finally….
5. What is one thing you want to do differently at work as we head into the fall?
