Lifestyle Design

20 Ways to Slow Down Your Summer

It’s summer time and the living’s easy.

Or is it?

For many people, summer looks just like the rest of the year. Same schedule. Same commute. Same cubicle. Even for entrepreneurs, summer can bring the same deadlines and to-do lists as any other season.

Remember those impossibly long summers as a child, when making mud pies, reading novels, and riding bikes up and down the street filled every afternoon? Even with a job and mortgage, you can bring a little slow living back into your life. Here’s your ultimate lazy summer living checklist.

Exit the Fast Lane

Pencil in down time this summer for these leisurely activities:

1. Walk barefoot

Wake your feet up this summer by stripping off your shoes and socks and walking barefoot as much as possible. Walking barefoot not only feels great; it improves your balance and posture and may prevent shin splints, plantar fasciitis, stress fractures, and other injuries. Each of your feet contains 20,000 nerve endings, and grass, sand, stones, and water are all sensory delights for your feet. (Learn more about the benefits of going barefoot and discover how to turn your yard into a barefoot garden here.)

2. Go on a picnic

Parenting pro tip: “Let’s go on a picnic!” is sure to garner more excitement from toddlers and preschoolers than “Let’s go for a walk!” That’s how I ended up turning nearly every lunch into a picnic for several years in my quest to get my boys to walk with me. Grab a blanket, pack some sandwiches or Mason-jar meals, and head to a scenic spot or nearby park. Pinterest-worthy picnic food not required.

3. Take a nap

How can you enjoy cool early summer mornings and late evenings, skip the sweltering afternoon heat, and get enough sleep in the process? Meet the summer nap a.k.a siesta. Aim to enjoy at least a few of these summer delights, especially on days you know you’ll be staying up later than usual. A nap can interfere with nighttime sleep if you take it too late in the day. But it can also boost alertness and improve work performance. I say, indulge every once in a while!

4. Sleep with the windows open

If you live in a safe, quiet neighborhood, nothing beats sleeping with a soft breeze and the sound of crickets outside. And as a bonus, you may sleep better.

5. Watch a meteor shower

Mark your calendars, the Perseid meteor shower peaks from August 11 to August 13. Depending on where you live and how dark it is, you’ll see a falling star every minute. Don’t forget to make some wishes!

6. Go camping

Spending time away from man-made lights resets the body’s circadian rhythm and improves quality of sleep, according to recent research. That may partly explain why camping can feel so restorative. Find a beautiful spot and leave the demands of your busy life for a few days.

7. Read a summer novel

If your nightstand’s stacked with business or personal development tomes, put them aside for a few weeks and indulge in some fun summer reading. Yes, reading can be an avenue to learning and growth. And it can also help you bring magic, imagination, and leisure back into your life. Looking for some indulgent summer reads? Check out this list.

8. Play a yard game

Nothing says summer like a rousing game of horseshoes, croquet, bocce ball, ladder toss, cornhole, badminton, or lawn bowling. Frisbee, softball, or kickball are also sure crowd-pleasers.

9. Make iced tea or coffee

Icy beverages are some of the true delights of the hottest months. But when you add ice to a hot beverage, you end up with a watered-down, weak drink. Up your iced tea and coffee game this summer by making cold-water extract. To make cold-water iced tea, add 3 to 4 tea bags per quart of cold water. Leave at room temperature for an hour and then refrigerate overnight. To make cold-water coffee, combine one cup of finely ground coffee beans with 4 cups of water, and refrigerate overnight. Serve over ice and enjoy.

10. Swim in a waterhole

Want to take a dip in a natural paradise? No matter where you live, chances are there’s a beautiful, secluded, natural swimming area nearby. Go to swimminghole.org to find one, and follow the common-sense precautions on the website to stay safe and healthy while you swim.

11. Play a board game

When’s the last time you wiled away an afternoon over a game of Scrabble or checkers? If you can’t remember, bring on the lemonade and board games. Our 10-year-old loves board games, so we play a lot of them. Some of our current favorites include the Ticket to Ride games, Battleship, and Clue. If you’re children fight when board games come out, try a cooperative board game, where everyone works together and everyone wins. My kids love Wildcraft: An Herbal Adventure Game, and they’ve learned a lot about plants while playing it. Go here for a list of other cooperative board games.

12. Go to a movie

Whether you’re watching a summer blockbuster or an art film, the movie theater is the perfect place to spend a sweltering summer afternoon.

13. Make a bouquet of summer flowers

Bring the color of summer indoors by gathering sunflowers, daisies, coneflowers, dahlias, zinnias, or whatever blooms are growing near you..

14. Go to a farmer’s market

Stock up on summer’s bounty and support local farmers, then whip together a fresh, flavorful (and preferably simple) summer feast.

15. Lie in a hammock

Forget your to-do list and kick back in your backyard hammock. Want to combine a nap and hammock session? Follow these tips for ultimate comfort: Make sure the hammock isn’t hung too tightly, position yourself diagonally, and arrange a pillow under your head.

16. Go out for ice cream

It’s summer. What better excuse to try one of the season’s new ice cream flavors, such as banana peanut butter chip, blackberry hibiscus, or brown butter bourbon truffle? Or go with classic vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry.

17. Eat watermelon

Watermelon is a summer superstar. It not only tastes delicious. It’s full of antioxidants and other nutrients and it’s one of the most hydrating summer fruits. Plus, you could always hold a seed-spitting competition to wile away some boredom.

18. Pick berries

Whether you find them on the side of a mountain trail or growing in your backyard, enjoy summer’s berries while you can. Come January, you’ll miss nature’s sweet treats … unless you head to a you-pick farm and pick enough to store in your freezer. Find a farm at pickyourown.org.

19. Roast marshmallows

Remember perfectly toasted, caramelized marshmallows from childhood camping trips? Me neither. Mine usually turned out to be deflated, charred, and shriveled messes. But now that we’re adults with real culinary skills, we can almost certainly do better — or at least have fun trying. Don’t forget to pack graham crackers and chocolate bars.

20. Host a barbecue

Fire up the barbecue and move the party outside. Remember, the point here is leisure. You have my permission to skip the Martha Stewart-worthy menu and table decor and aim for a relaxed grill-and-chill.

Mission: Enjoy Summer

You may never experience summer the way you did as a child. Mud pies and lemonade stands probably don’t hold the same appeal these days. But that doesn’t mean summer can’t bring a little magic. Before the season slips away, take back your time for some good old-fashioned summer leisure.

[Editor’s note: This is an updated version of a post originally published on July 30, 2018]

Struggling to Keep a Resolution? Try This.

By Abby Quillen

Do you make New Year’s resolutions? If so, you’re in good company. In surveys, nearly half of people say they usually do. The most common resolutions are to lose weight, exercise more, quit smoking, reduce debt, and manage money better.

Do you keep your resolutions? Unfortunately, if you’re like 92 percent of resolution makers, you may struggle to follow through.

Here’s why: Intention is important, but there’s a far more powerful step to making a change in your life. Design a system that supports your desired habit.

Keep reading to learn why designing a system is a crucial (but sometimes forgotten) part of changing a habit. Then discover how to create effective systems to:

Get out of debt
Save money
Eat healthier
Get fit

How to Change a Habit

Why does it usually feel so difficult to change a habit? You can blame your highly efficient brain. A habit has three parts: a trigger, a response, and a reward.

When you repeat the same trigger, response, and reward for about 60 days, your brain identifies it as a habit and moves it to the basal ganglia, deep brain structures responsible for unconscious motor behaviors.

After this, when you notice the trigger, your pre-frontal cortex prompts the basal ganglia to automatically initiate the response. That’s why it feels like you’re not in control of your habits — and why it can feel difficult to change them.

Here’s the good news: You can change a habit, and it doesn’t need to be that hard. But it pays to understand systems thinking, which is how structure helps create the conditions we face.

Because we like to think we’re in control of our habits, we often underestimate how much the design of the environment impacts our lives.

Systems Matter

For instance, you may think your health is in your own hands and determined by whether you decide to hit the salad bar or lace up your running shoes. But the design of your environment has a big impact on your actions.

Did you know the more intersections there are in your city, the less likely you are to suffer from obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, or heart disease? That’s because you’re more likely to walk or bike when your city’s infrastructure is designed for it.

The same thing is true of the infrastructure of your house. In cultures where people don’t have furniture and need to squat on the floor to sit and prepare food, people tend to stay agile into old age.

Here’s the bottom line: If you want to change something about your life, think about which structures are in place to support your old habit.

Unfortunately, the larger culture may be working against your healthy intentions. According to a recent study, only 3 percent of Americans have a healthy lifestyle, and the obesity rate is now up to 35 percent. We could clearly use some new society-wide systems.

But chances are, you can design a personal system to support your new habit. And when you do, you’ll be far more likely to follow through on your resolution. Here are some specific examples.

Design Your Life for Financial Security

Do you want to pay off debt, save money, or invest more? Here’s a surefire system to get on track. Set up your bill payments, savings deposits, and investment deposits to happen automatically. I resisted doing this for years, but once I did, my family’s finances improved dramatically.

You’ll need to set aside time to make a budget and then connect your accounts to your checking account or a credit card. If you have an employer, you may be able to also automatically divert some of your paycheck into savings and an investment account every time you get paid.

Don’t take an out-of-sight out-of-mind approach though. Sign up for alerts to find out what’s being withdrawn from your account. Then keep an eye on your account to make sure the appropriate amounts come in and out.

A company could accidentally overcharge you, although I haven’t had a problem in five plus years of automatically paying our bills.

Once a year, go through your bills to determine if you still need the service or can get a better deal with a different plan or company.

Design a Better Diet

If your resolution is to eat healthier, here are three systems to help you eat better:

Grow a vegetable garden
Join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program
Plan your meals.

When you garden or join a CSA (a weekly box of produce bought directly from a local farm), you increase your consumption of fruits and veggies and build your meals around the freshest, most nutritious produce available. (Check out this article to learn more reasons Local, Seasonal Foods are Superfoods.)

People who cook their meals at home also eat healthier without even trying. Planning meals makes cooking easier because it prevents the horrible feeling of staring into an empty fridge with no idea what to make when you’re hungry. If you’ve never planned your meals, it’s simple. For inspiration and ideas, check out this article I wrote on the subject for Fix.com.

Design Your Life for Fitness

Want to get in shape this year (without buying an expensive gym membership)? Here are four ways to design your life for more physical activity:

Walk, bike, or ride public transit to work

Active commuting is a powerful way to improve your health. Regular walking is the best thing you can do to maintain a healthy weight, according to a British study. Cycling to work can decrease your risk of getting cancer by 45 percent and heart disease by 46 percent, according to another study. And in a different study, public transit riders were the healthiest of all commuters, probably because they ended up walking most. Bonus: This change is also good for the environment, and it may help you save money.

Exchange a car trip per day for a walking or bike trip

Not everyone loves going for a walk. Just ask my kids. But walking to do an errand feels more authentic than going for an aimless walk. Make it a regular errand, and you’ll build regular exercise into your life. Aim for a 20 to 30 minute walk a day to meet the government’s health recommendations.

Remodel your house with health in mind

Most people’s houses are designed for sitting, but there’s no reason you can’t redesign your home for better health. Some people are outfitting their houses with monkey bars, mini trampolines, pull up bars, or climbing walls, and even transitioning to furniture-free living.

Redesigning your kitchen in subtle ways can make a big difference as well. Did you know you’re likely to eat about 13 percent less food if you use a small plate? You’ll also eat less food if the color of your food contrasts with the color of the plate.

Join a fitness streaming membership

Whether you love pilates, yoga, qigong, tai chi, barre 3, or any other type of workout, chances are you can stream unlimited videos in your living room affordably. That means you’ll know exactly where to go when it’s time to work out, which can help cut the paralysis from having too many choices. I love Essentrics and YoQi, which are each $15 a month. And there are many, many more options.

Conclusion

Old habits can be hard to break. Set yourself up for success by designing a system to make your resolution a reality.

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