How to Plan Your Most Successful Summer Ever

Congratulations, Friend, on making it through May-cember! For parents, educators, and artists alike, May is the spring equivalent of December–when every group, ensemble, class, and social club is required to have an end-of-year event, AND you’re trying to get your ducks in a row for summer travel, camps, festivals, houseguests, and graduations. 

For some of us, June isn’t all that much better, but at least the end is in sight. 

And beyond that? Lies summer. Beautiful Summer. 

I have a visceral memory of waking up one morning the summer after my senior year in high school. It was that period of time between the end of exams and graduation. I didn’t have to go to school, but I hadn’t started my summer job or headed off to my first festival yet. As my eyes opened, I could hear the birds chirping and feel the breeze coming through the window. It was sunny and bright outside—the cold dark mornings of getting to 7:10 Chamber Orchestra long behind me. It was a feeling of freedom. Of finally being able to exhale after what seemed like a decade of holding my breath. My parents were at work, and I had the whole house and the whole day (the whole week, really!) to do whatever I wanted. 

Total bliss. 

Knowing myself at that age, I would have immediately sat down with a journal and mapped out all of the repertoire I wanted to learn that summer, my practice schedule (even then, I loved to practice) all of the friends I wanted to see, and things I wanted to do (all while having a part-time job at Ravinia and attending some festivals and camps). 

And then before I knew it, it was late August and very little (if any) of it had happened. Some practicing, sure, some friends, of course, and a couple of activities, but most of my list would have remained unchecked. 

It wasn’t that I had been over-ambitious in my goals, either. It was more that I was lacking three key pieces of the puzzle. I’ve learned my lesson now, and today I will share with you how you, too, can plan your most successful summer ever. 

 

 

What, exactly, IS a successful summer? Well, that is entirely up to you.

• Maybe you have an ambitious project in mind that you’d like to complete. A successful summer would see that finished before you lit the Labor Day grill. 
• Or maybe you’ve been overworking for the past 9 months and are teetering on the edge of burnout. Maybe for you, a successful summer would be more about saying no to things and finding ways to rest and relax. 
• Or maybe for you, a successful summer looks like a balance of all the things. Family time, beach time, work projects, finally learning to play tennis and lounging by the pool reading that growing stack of books. 

Whatever a successful summer looks like to you, what if I told you that you’re pretty much guaranteed to be successful if you put just 3 specific things in place? Today, I’m going to take you through each of these 3 magical components and explain why and how they work. 

 

 

#1: Systems

If a goal is the desired outcome, your system is the behavior you put in place that will inevitably lead to that outcome, so you always want to start with getting a system or two in place.

My 18-year-old self wanted to go through all 40 Popper etudes that summer, but all I managed to do was to put that idea out into the air. I’d randomly flip through the book and choose one that appealed to me at the moment, and I’d guess I probably got through about 10 of them. A system would have looked like me dividing the number of etudes by the number of weeks I had and then setting aside a specific time of day, or amount of time per day to work on a set amount. 40 Etudes, (some I had already learned, most were new) divided by 10 weeks? 4 etudes per week. If I had spent just 30 minutes a day on them, I would have had a much higher rate of success. 

This summer? My personal goal is to finish writing my book. The system I’ve put in place? I sit down to write from 10 am-12 pm each day, and I’m averaging 1 chapter every 2 days (that’s a first draft, completely unedited chapter). If I can keep to that system (and so far, so good) I’ll meet my goal. 

Systems can work for small things in your life too. Doing a different household chore each day so that you’re always on top of them can be a system. I go over my stats and finances and do my bookkeeping every Friday. That’s a system. I have a system for caring for my garden. 

And while the thought of having to create and implement systems for every area of your life can sound overwhelming (and maybe overbearing, too) I promise you it’s not. If you create them one at a time and start to implement them into your daily routine, they become habits, which means they start to happen automatically, without needing to think about them. Systems help to reduce the number of decisions you make each day, and they are a way to focus your energy on the actions that will (actually) lead to your desired outcome rather than wasting your energy daydreaming about your goal without ever taking action. 

 

 

 

#2: Measure Your Progress

In the Arts, it can be very difficult to measure one’s progress. If an artist works at the canvas for two hours, is the piece better? Sometimes we’ve made it worse. Sometimes it feels the same. In truth, it’s all in the eye of the beholder. A violinist can measure the consistency of making a shift after 15 minutes of practicing it, but how do they measure whether their phrasing is more “heartfelt”?

So to borrow a term from the business world, we’re going to look for some Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs. A KPI for a salesman might be the number of calls they made per day, the number of conversations they had, and the number of deals they closed. It could also be the number of refunds they had to give, or the number of referrals they received from happy customers. 

If the goal is to run a 10K, and the system is getting out the door for a run every day at 7am, then some KPIs could be the timings of your runs, the distance you were able to go, the number of 5Ks you’ve done, and your heart rate both while running and resting. 

As for my book project? My goal is to finish the manuscript, My system is to write each day from 10-12, and my KPIs are things like word count, chapters finished, sources cited, quotes checked, and revisions made. 

What do I DO with these KPIs? I keep track of them. A spreadsheet, or a notebook, it doesn’t really matter as long as you are measuring and checking in regularly. This will help keep you on track and will help you to see trends. Maybe you’ll notice that you never get out the door for your run on Thursdays because you have Wednesday night choir practice and you’re always too tired. Seeing this on your tracking sheet week after week will help you to make adjustments as you go. 

 

 

#3: Put Some Accountability in Place

Even the laziest student will put in the practice hours before a recital. Our wannabe 10K runner will get their butt off the couch in the days leading up to a race. In both of these cases, the accountability isn’t in the deadline event itself, it’s knowing that people will know how we did. It’s not “Well, recitals are important goalposts throughout the year, so I should prepare”, but rather. “Grandma is going to be there and I want her to think I’m really good!” 

 Not “This race will be a good checkpoint for me in my progress” but more likely “My friends and family are going to be out there watching me! I don’t want to embarrass myself!” 

I love the story of the two friends who acted as each other’s workout accountability partners by swapping 1 shoe after each workout. That way, if they didn’t show up the next morning, the OTHER person couldn’t work out either, because they wouldn’t have both of their shoes!

I always smile when clients show up to a session and tell me that they have crammed a ton of work into the last few days because they wanted to be able to report progress to me. They’re always so embarrassed to tell me that, but that’s part of why they hired me in the first place. We’re all smart and capable humans. If we could do all of the things we wanted to do without accountability, we would all have accomplished so much more! The point is that, after years of sitting on their ideas, not making ANY progress on it, here they are—making progress, seeing their ideas and projects come to life—even if by cramming in the work 2 days before each coaching session. They’re still doing the work, and they’re still getting to those desired outcomes. 

As for my book? I have hired an amazing book/publishing coach to help keep me on track. I meet with her regularly and report on my writing progress as we talk through cover design, layout, and marketing strategies. She has important work to do on the book as well, and I know that if I’m not writing it, she can’t do her job either. 

• Want to read more books this summer? Join a book club, or find a friend who has similar taste and reading goals and set a time to discuss each book. 
• Want to take on a big project? Hire a coach or join a mastermind group to have the support and accountability in place. 

 

 

Whatever your goals are this summer, try putting these three things in place. Create a system around it, figure out what is measurable about it, commit to keeping track of the numbers, and find someone who can keep you accountable. You’ll be seeing those desired outcomes come to life right before your eyes, and this Labor Day Weekend, you’ll be looking back on your most successful summer ever. 

Speaking of masterminds, this year’s round of my 9-month group program, Creatives Leadership Academy is finishing up next week–I can’t even believe it. The next round doesn’t start until October, but I already have people interested in joining. It is a limited group, so if CLA is something that you’ve been thinking about, let me know now and I’ll add you to the waitlist so you don’t miss out on the opportunity when I officially open enrollment in September. Book a call at KateKayaian.com or through the link in the show notes and we can discuss all of the things. 

Cheers,

Kate