Support Tools for Summer Self-Care and Productivity
Source: Unsplash (@Aaron Burden)
For many, summer break starts as a breath of fresh air: inviting, invigorating, and instilling a vision of fun with friends and family, as well as newfound productivity and growth. However, it can be easy for summer to devolve into a whirlwind of lost time. Whether you’re juggling a job, classes, or just adjusting to a new routine, the right tools can help you truly rest and grow.
Over the years, my summers have been packed with volunteer or work gigs, busy with extra classes or activities, filled with new hobbies, or blissfully spent doing “nothing” at all! Read on to hear about some of the tools that have helped me keep my mind and goals in check during the summer.
Habits and Habit Trackers
Once upon a time, I was an avid bullet journalist. For those who don’t know, bullet journaling is essentially a personalized calendar, journal, and habit tracker all in one! I found that bullet journaling was more fun as a creative project rather than an effective calendar, journal, or habit tracker, since I would often get carried away making my journal look nice and neglect to use it for its intended purposes. While I loved the creativity of bullet journaling, it ultimately wasn’t functional enough for my lifestyle. I am, however, grateful that bullet journaling has introduced me to habit tracking and its many benefits!
I like to track habits that I’m trying to quit alongside those I’m trying to build. For instance, I used to be a pretty extreme night owl. I’d rarely ever sleep before midnight, resulting in drowsiness during the day, as well as mid-day naps that interrupted my sunlight hours, which kept my harmful cycle afloat. My main “habit to quit” was “sleeping past midnight.”
On the other hand, my main “habits to build” are daily exercise, studying, and creativity. While measurable and actionable goals are best, I find that these more general habits encourage an ongoing lifestyle change rather than a quota to meet, which may be more well-suited for a habit being built from the ground up. Daily exercise can range from a brisk walk in the park to a full-on gym session or cycling class—it depends on the day. Studying is my catch-all term for any activity like reading, writing, doing homework, studying for a test, or learning a new skill. Finally, the habit I’m working on that I’ve developed the least is daily creativity, which has been the most challenging for me. My personal goal this summer is to create something—anything—every day to the best of my ability. This could mean making an art piece, playing instruments, or editing a design. This could also mean having a really meaningful conversation… Again, it depends on the day!
Okay… so I have some habits in mind. How do I keep track of them?
Here are some habit-tracking tools I’ve tried and some of their features:
Habit Tracker by Davetech Co. (app)
Visually appealing, customizable colours
Progress bars, streak tracking, and completion rates
Habitica (app)
Great for gamers — level up while completing real-life tasks!
Co-op with friends to stay accountable and slay monsters in-app
Dress your avatar with accessories and pets unlocked by achievements
BulletJournal.com (website) or traditional bullet journaling
Perfect for creatives who enjoy customizing their own layouts
Therapeutic and flexible
Habit trackers are effective tools for visualizing slow, consistent progress, building discipline with small and big habits alike, and maintaining a sense of structure in otherwise flexible summer activities. I encourage you to try tracking at least one habit this summer, if you aren’t already!
Learning — Academic and Non-Academic
I get it—summer is for relaxation, enjoyment, and a break from school and/or work. However, I personally find that after a week or so of catching up on sleep debt, I tend to seek another structured daily routine that makes me feel challenged and motivated to wake up each day.
This ebb and flow between hardship and success is the natural pace of our lives, and we often even carry it out on a small scale, unbeknownst to ourselves. Whether or not we notice it, we seek growth in subtle ways.
This growth certainly doesn’t have to be academic, but it can be! Summer classes and internships are the most straightforward way to grow academically and professionally, but some people might benefit more from self-guided learning. Resources like Coursera, Udemy, and Khan Academy are all accessible resources for young adults to explore topics and learn new academic or professional skills. I also highly recommend Duolingo or Rosetta Stone for those wanting to pick up a new language. These sites are low-cost options for continued informal learning through the summer.
If you’re seeking a true break from school or work, I suggest picking up a hobby or skill! For instance, a few summers ago, I picked up calligraphy and hand lettering, practicing through guided videos and posts to eventually start my own calligraphy account. More recently, I learned how to solve a Rubik’s cube in under 30 seconds. While these skills may not be obviously practical, learning them has, in my opinion, taught me many skills. The process of learning calligraphy showed me the importance of pushing past the plateau that most experience when trying something new, since I was able to visually notice when I improved my strokes and when my style became stagnant or uninteresting. While learning how to solve a Rubik’s cube, I noticed how some small epiphanies helped with the memorization process, which taught me to always seek out intuitive answers to things. My encouragement to you this summer is: learn something, anything! There is almost always an underlying lesson to learn.
I am confident you will learn two things if you aim to learn one.
The right tools can help you thrive during summer, rather than just surviving and pushing through. I hope everyone has a restful and fulfilling summer :)