Posted on August 27, 2026
As summer fades into fall, many of us will see significant changes in daily routines. For those with children, school schedules take over. Vacations end, and our work pace picks up. We say goodbye to summer friends and rituals. The days grow shorter, squeezing our time outdoors.
With diminishing daylight, we naturally generate less serotonin, the “happiness hormone.” As we see summer end, our levels of dopamine, one of the feel-good hormones, may also decline. Taken together, these changes can lead to a noticeable downward shift in our mood.
Much of what happens this time of year is outside our control, and this is what we tend to focus on. But there is still much we can do to make fall feel better. We can profit from a close look at what we are doing and not doing with our time and energy and the benefits and costs of our choices.
The fact is that each of us has only so much bandwidth at our disposal. Like a computer that can only process a finite amount of data in a certain amount of time, there is only so much we can do in a day without burning out or breaking down. The more numerous our goals, the harder it is to accept this reality. But doing so and taking it into account as we embark on a new season can help us make important choices.
What Am I Aiming For?
Before looking at the goals we intend to pursue this fall, we need to step back and think about our longer-term objectives. It helps to envision, as vividly as possible, what we would like our life to look like several years from now. What would we be doing? How would we be feeling? Where would we be and with whom? What personal values appear in this vision of our future self? What stands out as most important in this picture? Creating this vision makes it easier to see whether our activities align with the person we want to become.
It's helpful to consider our motivations. Sometimes we engage in activities that are extrinsically motivated. A friend asks us to join a committee that is more interesting to them than to us, but we agree because we like the person and want to please them. Or we let ourselves be flattered into a board position because it will gain us positive recognition.
These activities consume bandwidth, and if they don’t align with our goals – arrived at by considering our long-term vision and personal values – that’s bandwidth that could be spent on more personally meaningful activities.
What’s My Season?
Much of this depends on what season of life – as well as what season of the year – we are currently in. Being a parent of young children is different from being a parent of teenagers, which is different from being a grandparent. Being at the peak of a career is different from being retired.
What is feasible in one season of life may be much more challenging in another, and this needs to be recognized. But whatever season we are in, we can reflect on whether our goals are intrinsically motivated by our personal vision and values. Considering our current life season, we should ask ourselves: “Is this activity important right now?”
What’s on My List?
Enjoying summer while it lasts may have meant adding things to a fall to-do list, which can dampen spirits as the time to pursue that list approaches. Taking a new look at the list through a lens of conserving our time and energy for what matters most, we may be able to eliminate some to-dos or delegate them to others.
We may even create a not-to-do list as a way of reminding ourselves of things we want to resist doing. Maybe we want to take a forty-five-minute walk three afternoons a week before dark but wonder where we’ll find the time. Keeping close track for a few days of how we spend our time can be revealing. What about that time we spent idly scrolling through social media? Maybe that can go on the fall not-to-do list.
What’s One Small Step?
As the time comes to embark on our plans, it helps to remember that small steps matter. As author James Clear says in Atomic Habits, “All big things come from small beginnings.” Due to our brain’s neuroplasticity, we can develop new brain pathways that will, in time and with repetition, replace old ones. We should recognize and celebrate each small win for what it is: one step away from an old habit and toward a new one.
What Am I Waiting For?
In her book How to Change, Katy Milkman, PhD describes what she calls the “fresh start effect,” the feeling that certain dates – New Year’s or a birthday, for example – give us the sense of an opportunity for a new beginning. This feeling of a new beginning, she writes, can lead us to “pause, reflect, and think about the big picture, which makes us more likely to consider trying to make a change.”
Why wait for New Year’s or your next birthday? Let fall give you a fresh start.