How to Plan a Peaceful Fall Season
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ My 5 tips for planning a peaceful fall season
⋒ How I use my Peacefully Productive Planner to prepare
⋒ How and why I make sure to incorporate rest into my plans
I don’t know about you, but in my mind, fall starts in mid-August. Even though technically, we still have quite a bit of summer left – over 2 months – the first day of fall isn’t until September 23! But in Florida, August is back-to-school time so growing up, I would always pair August with fall in my brain.
That’s kinda what inspired this blog post – knowing that in my mind, fall is right around the corner even though it’s not, lol. But part of Hustling Sanely is being proactive instead of reactive.
I think taking some time now to prep for the fall is going to be extremely helpful because I feel like once fall gets here, life picks up speed even more than usual for most people. The slowness of summer fades away and fall is bustling for back-to-school season and it’s when a lot of people start prepping for the holidays.
I think we can all agree that September-December is a beautiful whirlwind, you know?
Doing a little bit of intentional prepping for that now can keep you from falling captive to the chaos and take ownership of your fall season!
In the past, I’ve always been a little bit bummed because I didn’t do everything that I wanted to do in the fall because honestly it just crept up on me and I didn’t strategically plan.
Now, as a mom, I’m wanting to make seasons and holidays special for Everly so I’m taking my seasonal planning a little bit more seriously than I have in the past.
Whether or not you have kids, seasonal planning helps us to make the most of each season without it getting away from us. It allows us to set intentions and give our best time and energy to what matters most to us.
I came up with 5 tips that I’m going to use to help me plan a peaceful fall season and I’m going to share them with you today:
01. Make note of all the important events happening and tasks/projects you want to do.
You probably don’t know all the events/dates for all the fall things yet but for what you do know about, it’s helpful to get them on the calendar now so they don’t sneak up on you. Or maybe you wrote down important fall dates in your planner back in January so it’s been a while since you’ve seen them so take some time to flip through your August-December calendar (because fun fact, winter doesn’t start til the end of December) to refresh.
So things like work meetings, back to school night, the first day of school, any trips, anniversaries, important birthdays, etc.
Once you’ve got what you know about on the calendar, decide what tasks/projects are a priority for you from August-December. I recommend flipping back to the beginning of your Peacefully Productive Planner and reviewing any goals that you set for those months, too.
In tip 04, I’ll explain how I keep track of all of this stuff.
Looking at everything together (so your events, projects, tasks, and goals) and getting a bird’s eye view perspective allows you to see which months are going to be a little fuller and which months you can lean more into prolonged periods of rest.
02. Create a fall vision and define your priorities for the season.
I hope these 2 things ring a bell because they’re keys 2 and 3 to Hustling Sanely! Key 02 is get clear on your vision and Key 03 is define your priorities.
To help you get clear on your fall vision, start macro and get more micro.
Spend a few minutes thinking about each month of the fall season:
What kind of things do you envision focusing on in September? In October? In November?
Then, think about how you want a week in your life to look and feel this fall.
Then, think about how you want a day in your life to look and feel this fall.
Using that vision you came up with, define what your priorities are for the fall season.
I like to think of our priorities as action steps for making our vision happen.
When I define my priorities for a season, I like to think of what my non-negotiables are for each day, each week, and each month. What habits do I need to weave into my life in order to live out my vision?
We’re the Hustle Sanely Squad and we love a concrete example so let’s dig into one:
Maybe you imagine September being a month when you focus on your mental wellness. With that in mind, an ideal week in your life might include sticking to your contracted work hours, going on a date with your person once a week, having a solo evening once a week to decompress and practice a hobby, spending a lot of time outside, and meeting up with a friend or family member for at least every other week.
And an ideal day in your life might look like waking up the first time your alarm goes off so you can journal and workout before work, taking an actual lunch break, clocking out of work on time, going for a walk after work (maybe with a friend or maybe solo), having dinner with your family, tidying up/resetting your home, watching a show or playing a game with your partner, doing your skincare routine, journaling, and going to bed by 9:45 to read for a little while before you fall asleep.
If that’s your vision, your priorities for the upcoming season might look like:
DAILY:
~ Journal every morning and evening
~ Move for 30 minutes
~ Tidy for 15 minutes
~ Spend at least 15 minutes outside
~ In bed by 9:45 PM
WEEKLY:
~ Date night with my partner
~ Solo evening to practice a hobby
~ At least 4 dinner nights as a family
MONTHLY:
~ 2 meetups with friends
~ Outdoor adventure with my family (visiting the zoo or going on a hike)
See? It’s not hard to do this…it just takes some intention.
03. Create a fall bucket list.
Okay this one is fun – who doesn’t love a bucket list???
I personally like creating a seasonal bucket list because it reminds me to pause and weave fun things into my life just because they’re fun! Not because they tie back to a goal or are growing me professionally. Recovering workaholic here as you know!
I keep this super simple… I just jot down fun things I want to do each month of the fall season in list form but if you are a visual person or just feeling creative, you can make a vision board-inspired bucket list on Pinterst or Canva or whatever.
Some things that are on my fall bucket list:
~ Dressing up for Halloween as a family
~ Going to a fall festival
~ Visiting a pumpkin patch
~ Have a girls’ spooky movie night (and by spooky I mean Hocus Pocus, lol)
~ Have a bonfire s’mores date night
One thing that I used to get so annoyed by was getting to the end of fall only to realize that I missed out on doing so much that I wanted to do because I never created a plan for it.
Which brings us right to tip 4:
04. Create a tentative schedule for the fall.
Up until this point, you’ve done the prep work to know what’s coming up for you and your family this fall (or at least you have a start of knowing), you’ve created a vision and defined priorities to support it, and you’ve thought about some fun stuff that you want to weave into your fall season.
Now it’s important to create a plan that puts off this together so that it all flows well into your life.
The way I do this is in my Peacefully Productive Planner.
I start with the quarterly prep spread and outline goals I’m focusing on each month as well as important dates and events happening each month. Then, I use the weekly routine builder on the quarterly prep spread to create a weekly outline for the season.
Obviously, this is a hopeful typical week in my life but it’s okay that my weeks don’t follow it exactly. Our schedules and routines are tools, not chains.
Once I plan the quarter at-a-glance, so I know what’s going on from a bird’s eye view, I use the monthly calendar spread pages to get more detailed about each month. I write all the important events on the calendar part (obviously) then I use the personal task list section to jot down my top 3 priorities and other tasks/things that I want to do that month - this is where you can tie in your bucket list things!
Then, I use the professional task list section to jot down my top 3 priorities and other tasks/things that I want to do that month.
Once I see all the tasks in list form, I add them to the Monday box of the week that I plan to do them on the monthly calendar.
Then I use the weekly pages to keep track of my non-negotiables in habit tracker form! Fun fact – the 2024 planners have weekly habit trackers!
Whatever planning system you use, make sure to spend some time inputting all of the fall brainstorming you did so that it doesn’t get away from you. Planning things out, whether on paper or digitally, helps us get a full picture of everything and can help hold us accountable to what we brainstormed instead of just leaving it floating around in our minds where things end up being forgotten or slipping through the cracks.
05. Dedicate 1 weekend a month to focusing on rest.
Y’all know I’m always a fan of scheduling in intentional rest but I think it’s especially important during busier times of the year. Rest isn’t just going to magically happen – especially if you’re not used to regularly resting now. It takes practice to weave rest into your life if that’s not your norm.
I encourage you to dedicate one weekend to focusing on rest – whatever rest looks like for you. Even if that means moving around or canceling some of your plans.
If this makes you flinch or you’re like “oh there’s no way, I have too much to do” – I challenge you to try it because when we don’t rest on the regular, that’s when burnout happens.
We have a few podcast episodes on rest if you are interested in learning more about rest and what it can look like for you:
Episode 099: Why You’re Always Exhausted 😴:
Episode 128: How to Rest (even if you're bad at resting now)
In case you need a reminder – rest is whatever refreshes you. That can change depending on what your season of life looks like. For me right now, a restful weekend would be not having any commitments on the calendar so that I had space and margin to just be instead of do. Rest for me is getting to decide what feels good from moment to moment for a day or 2.
So I’d of course do my day-to-day responsibilities that come along with being a mama but I would be refreshed knowing we don’t have to get out of the house to be somewhere or do something.
I’d have the freedom to read or work on a small house project or take a nap myself while Everly naps or go on a family walk.
Rest for me looks like no set-in-stone commitments and getting to just go with the flow but it could look completely different for you and that’s okay. Whatever rest is to you, carve out one weekend a month to lean into it.
That is what I’ve got for y’all today – a few things you can to do to plan for a peaceful fall season!
To recap, the tips are:
01. Make note of all the important events happening and tasks/projects you want to do.
02. Create a fall vision and define your priorities for the season.
03. Create a fall bucket list.
04. Create a tentative schedule for the fall.
05. Dedicate 1 weekend a month to focusing on rest.
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