Summer Habits That Actually Stick When School Starts
Summer Habits That Actually Stick When School Starts
[00:00:00] Welcome to the eight to four teacher where we tackle the habits, routines, and mindset shifts that help teachers leave school at four without guilt. This is a space for teachers who wanna do meaningful work without working around the clock. I'm your host, Barb Flowers, and I believe you can be an amazing teacher and have a life outside of school.
Let's build a teaching life that feels sustainable and fulfilling. Let's make eight to four your new normal.
. Welcome to the eight to four teacher. I'm so glad you're here Today. We are talking about summer habits that actually stick when school starts teachers, you know those routines. You start in the summer that you swear you'll keep when school starts.
Maybe it's working out. Eating better or having hobbies for yourself, but let's talk about how to actually make them stick. That's what we're talking about today in the podcast, because so often I hear so many educators. That create this ideal summer routine. They're eating healthier, they're [00:01:00] losing weight, they're exercising, and they're feeling better.
They're taking time for themselves. But then school starts and it's like we put all of that to the side and totally dive back into teaching and forget that we need to be taking care of ourselves and we need to have this. Balance for ourselves of what that looks like. And so today we're going to talk about using summer as the foundation for creating habits that will stick when school starts.
So first I wanna talk about why is summer the best time to build habits? Well, there's fewer time constraints. So you can start new things. You can do the research you need to do, find programs maybe that you wanna do. , You have more mental bandwidth to focus on yourself and the things you wanna do and space to experiment with what you wanna do without pressure.
And an example of this is, let's say meal prepping. Let's say you wanna be a healthier person, whether you wanna lose weight or not. You wanna be healthier. You could find the type of foods that you want to eat, or the meal plan you [00:02:00] wanna follow, or whatever that is. And actually take time to try recipes, explore, find the easiest recipes to make that you would wanna make during the school year, and practice making them now.
So by the time school starts, it's going to be so easy to make those recipes, for example. It because the goal is you don't wait for school to settle down. It never does. We know that it never does. Things never settle down once school starts. Summer is your training ground for a school year routine, and so that's what you really wanna focus on this summer is who do I wanna be when the school year starts, and how can I use this summer as my training ground to figure that out and get that done and experiment.
You also wanna identify what your anchor habits are. So what are the things that you wanna keep doing when school gets busy? So we talked about meal prepping. Maybe you started in the summer working out every day. Well, I encourage you to make it a morning workout or [00:03:00] make it at a time
that you would work out during the school year so that you can actually practice that Maybe you've grown to, , start, maybe you've started journaling in the summer. That's a great habit to get into and you wanna journal throughout the school year to reflect. When would that work for you? Would it work in the morning during your school schedule?
Would it work at night? Would it be a good Sunday night thing? You know, what works for you? The other thing that I highly encourage people to do during the school season is use your Sundays to plan for the week. And personally, even during the summer, I still do that because it's just part of my habit. I do my grocery shopping on Friday or Saturday.
Meal prep on Sunday and really plan out what does my week look like? What are the things I have going on? What do I need to schedule around? And keeping that routine of making Sunday my planning session, because when I worked in a school as a teacher and then even as a principal, I would plan out my outfits for the week I'd meal prep.
I had everything ready [00:04:00] because it just made it so much easier if I could just grab my breakfast and go grab my lunch and go have my. Outfits ready because that could be a whole thing, planning out what I wanna wear. So whatever that is, I really encourage you as much as possible to keep that Sunday night planning session because it's just a good way to keep that routine and habit.
Also, having an evening wind down routine. So pick one or two routines that are going to make the biggest difference on your energy or mindset. One routine I like is thinking about three gratitudes. So.. Before bed, what are three things I'm grateful for? What are three wins that I had for the day?
What are three wins I'm going to have for tomorrow? We call it the three. Three. Three method, three gratitudes, three wins for the day. Three wins I'm going to have tomorrow. That could be your evening wind down routine. Maybe it's that you wanna read 10 pages of a book or read a chapter. , Pick what those routines are and stick with them.
The more you can anchor them now, the better you'll be when school starts. And then just remember, don't aim for [00:05:00] perfection again. We know in summer it can be crazy. You have vacations and different, , events happening that might not be happening during the school year. Don't aim for perfection, just something that is repeatable that can be a good routine or habit for you.
And the nice thing about summer is you are more flexible. So try different times of day. Try different formats for whatever you wanna do. So for example, for exercise, maybe you try. Walking, strength training, running, like figuring out what exercise makes you feel good and not too tired, what do you wanna do?
Maybe you're figuring out is it a 20 minute workout that works for you or is it 45 minutes? What do you need to do? And then the other thing I would say is always make it visual. I like to have some sort of trackers as I'm sitting here recording this. , I'm looking at my meal tracker. I track down all my food, I have an Apple watch and I track down my, , exercise and my steps.
All of these things are habits that I track, and the more I track them, the more likely I am to make sure that I do [00:06:00] them. The other thing I'd encourage you to do is habit stack. So what you do here is you create a habit. So for example, I have the habit most people do of brushing their teeth, right?
Whatever time that is for you. Stack a habit. On top of that, maybe as you brush your teeth right after you go out, or as you brush your teeth, you think about your three gratitudes for the day. You know, whatever habits you wanna create. Habit, stack them to a habit that you already have. I like to get our coffee ready in the morning, um, the night before.
It just makes mornings go smoother. So that could be something I stack another habit on top of when I get the coffee ready, that is like part of my wind down routine. Okay, so think about how your routines that you're starting now in the summer can work when you have a commute, when you have morning staff meetings, whatever it is, start to test those routines and tweak them now.
The other thing I want you to try, this is just something, , a little challenge for you is to create a school day [00:07:00] version of your habit and test it one day a week this summer. , For example, test what your schedule would actually look like. If you had school, if you know that you leave school at seven 30 in the morning and you get home at four 30, what would your habits look like in that day?
And I really encourage you to test them and try them so that you can lock in those systems for the school year, because. The better habits and routines that you have in place, the more successful you're going to be. I talked about in the summer reset, the last podcast episode we were talking about, , resetting.
And really the goal here is to reset and create habits that make you the eight to four teacher when school starts. You have to have those habits in routines in place
you have to shift your mindset. Systems beat willpower. None of us have the willpower to work out at five o'clock at night when we're tired from being at school all day. But if you have the systems and routines in place, they will take over. Systems beat willpower. When school gets busy, your systems take over.
So remember that [00:08:00] mindset shift. And if you wanna stay consistent, one thing I have that could help you is the teacher's custom habit system. I created this to create habits all throughout the school year, habits in your classroom, habits that you use in your personal life. And what I've included in here are trackers, and then I have four proven habit building frameworks,
where I actually teach you how to make those new routines and habits stick using based strategies and real classroom examples. And this is only $7, so I really encourage you to get it. , I will put the link in the show notes, so check it out. But really, whether you're working on routines, , in your classroom or routines in your personal life, it's just going to help to have goal setting sheets to track them and make sure you're taking care of yourself this habit tracking system is going to help you build the habits that matter , and make you more successful when school starts. So. Check that out, see how it works. But just remember, our goal here is to help you be the eight to four [00:09:00] teacher so that you can be out the door by four.
I hope you found this helpful. If you did share this episode with a friend, find a friend who might need to create habits too. Work on them together and create those habits that are going to make you successful when the school year starts.
