How "A Days" and "B Days" Can Save Your Summer

If summer has ever left you feeling torn between being the “fun mom” and the “productive mom,” you are not alone. That internal tug-of-war between enjoying the moment and keeping your life on track can quickly turn summer into a season of guilt, stress, and burnout.

In this episode, I’m sharing one of my favorite seasonal strategies, A Days and B Days, to help you enjoy summer and stay on top of what matters most. This simple system gives you a way to be fully present with your family without letting your priorities slip through the cracks.

Whether you’re running a business, managing a household, or both, this episode will show you how to approach summer with intention, so you can enjoy it as much as your kids do.

In This Episode, I’ll Walk You Through:

• What A Days, B Days, and even C Days actually are
• Why this system helps reduce guilt, stress, and resentment
• How to customize your summer schedule to fit your family and your responsibilities
• How communication and rhythm make this work (and keep it sustainable all summer)
• A few examples from my own summer planning that might inspire your own

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Transcript

[00:00:00] If Summer has ever left you feeling torn between being the fun mom and the productive mom, trust me, you are not alone. Now, instead of bouncing between guilt and stress all summer long, what if you had a system that gave you permission for both fun and productivity? In today's episode, I'm gonna be sharing my.

[00:00:22] Favorite summer planning trip that I call a days and B days, and exactly how they can support you all summer long.

[00:00:38] Hi friends. Welcome to the Work Life Harmony podcast. today is, a topic. It's something that I train on inside of my signature program, which is called The Top Program, all Things Time Management, organization and Productivity for Women. And today's topic is actually a fan favorite, especially this time of year.

[00:00:56] In fact, one of our top program students wrote in last year saying A days and B Days changed. My life and then Danielle, shared for once, I'm actually enjoying summer as much as my kids friends. That is what it is all about. So let me set the stage here. Let me know if this sounds familiar to you, right?

[00:01:19] You've been working through the school year. You see that summer break lingering, and you're so excited for it because you are ready for some. Relaxation, right? You're ready to not have that morning stress of getting everybody out the door. You're literally counting down the days till summer break starts.

[00:01:36] Well, the first week of summer it's usually pretty great. Everyone's getting a little extra rest. We're having fun. We're hitting the pool, you know, doing all the fun summertime activities. But then as week two and week three hit, usually I start to see three of these things happen. Three feelings start happening.

[00:01:54] First, we start feeling guilty. We start feeling guilty of like, am I doing enough as a mom? Right? Because we don't just get to go on summer break. We still have to keep things going, whether you're a business owner, whether you're ma, you know, managing everything going on at home, right? You still have things for yourself, whether you're working outside of the home.

[00:02:15] So we start to feel guilty like we're not doing enough as a mom. Then we start to get frustrated because we're like, man, I just, I can't figure out how to get this stuff done that I wanna get done. And then the resentment usually starts to set, set in a little bit. Like, well, where's my summer break? I feel like all I'm doing is try and do fun things for my family and then, you know, I'm fitting in all the stuff for me on the side.

[00:02:36] And I'm exhausted. Right? And that happens. And so then usually rounding out about week three of summer break, we start counting down until the school year is back in. 'cause we're like this, it feels impossible. I'm really struggling to figure out how can I enjoy summer, but still stay productive. And I know I went through this for years counting down the days till summer.

[00:03:02] By the end of week three or four of summer, I already found myself counting down the days until the school year started to get structure and routine and certainty back into my life again. So I knew I. I needed to figure this out, right? There's surely there had to be a way where I could enjoy summer as much as my, you know, my child does, but that everything doesn't have to come to a screeching halt, right?

[00:03:28] Meaning for me, my business doesn't just go on the back burner and nothing happens. I ended up creating what I call my a day. Bday approach. And that's exactly what I'm gonna be covering and breaking down for you here today. Now I'm gonna be using this example of a days, B days, and then actually C days 'cause there's a little nuance I wanna share here, I've had women go through the program who are like, you know what?

[00:03:51] I had A, B, C, and D days. All right? So you get to customize this in a way that works for you and your realities. All right, so let me explain what this a day Bday concept is. So an A day is a day that I consider a family forward day, meaning this is really an opportunity for all of us to enjoy summer activities.

[00:04:16] We can be spontaneous. I'm not saying we have to decide weeks ahead what we're doing on an A day. But when I, when I say today's an A day to our family, they know that means like, pretty much the bulk of the day is for us to go enjoy summer activities, guilt-free, and I get to be fully present, enjoying them all right.

[00:04:34] Now, in a couple minutes I'm gonna talk about how do you, you know, break down what your a day and B days look like. But I just wanna set the stage of what they are right now. Now a B day, right? So a days are family forward. B day is what I consider a business forward day, or you might consider a task forward day, right?

[00:04:51] A more traditional product, you know, productivity type day, where things that you've said both have to and need to get done are happening. In a way that you don't feel like you're being pulled in in two different, you know, or 20 different directions all day long. So a days are my family, forward days. B days are my business forward days.

[00:05:11] Now I mentioned a C day. I'm not really gonna talk much about that here, but I do wanna differentiate what I consider a C day because it's neither a nor b. A C day is when my family is on a true vacation. Over the summer. 'cause sometimes every day feels, our kids might think every day should be vacation, right?

[00:05:31] But if you take a true family vacation, maybe you go to the beach for a week. We always tend to go to our family's lake house for about nine days over the summer. And that's true vacation, meaning I am not working, I'm not tackling anything that would live on a traditional to-do list. Alright. So for us, sea days are like.

[00:05:52] True Vacay mode. So I'm not gonna really spend any time there today. Today I really wanna differentiate between getting a family forward a day versus a business forward, or task forward B day and what those might look like Now. Everybody's a day and B day is going to B different, and I wanna make sure you understand that.

[00:06:13] 'cause I'm going to give you an example of what my A days and B days looked like. Last summer, but you cannot simply plug and play what mine looked like for two main reasons. Number one, your, what I'm about to show you is step one here is going to be different than mine. Meaning the things that you've decided you've got to figure out how to fit in each week is uniquely yours.

[00:06:40] All right, and then second thing that is uniquely yours is the realities of your current life right now, your home life, right? Do you have a 2-year-old that gets up at 5:00 AM or are you in a season of life with teenagers that want to sleep till noon? Right? All of this gets to play into creating what your a day and your B day.

[00:07:00] Looks like. So here's the first thing that I, I will be going through here in the next couple weeks as we get ready to move into summer break. The first thing I'm gonna be doing is assessing for myself what are my must do, you know, tasks that I know I need to create time for every single week. Right? And that's gonna be both personally.

[00:07:26] And for the business, right? So I don't just go off the grid all summer long here with the pink bee. Things are happening, things are running, but we prepare for this. I lighten my load in the summer, but there are still things that I need to do every single week to, you know, as the CEO of the pink. B, for example, you're listening to this podcast, right?

[00:07:48] We don't stop podcast episodes over the summer. They continue to publish out. So what you will need to do for yourself is really take some creative time and space to jot down, okay, what are all the things even during the summer months that I know I want to or need to get done every, every week? And the next part of this is how long do those take?

[00:08:15] So what we need to understand is even during the summer months, how much time each week do you need to protect for yourself on your calendar in a thoughtful, intentional way? That is going to support you getting things done. Now, notice this is very different than how most people roll into the summer.

[00:08:39] Most people roll into the summer kind of with this, oh, it's summer. It's great. You know, I'll have all this free time. I'll, I'll get up early, I'll do some work in the morning. I'll have time in the afternoon, or I'll bring my computer to the pool and I can work while the kids are swimming. Right? It's just kind of this.

[00:08:54] Vision out there of how we're just gonna magically get all of our stuff done in the nooks and crannies and as, as we have a slow day. Or I'll just plan to do that on a morning. The kids are sleeping in, right? There's no intentionality there. And when it lacks intentionality, it's usually not gonna get done.

[00:09:11] Or you're gonna be stuck in that feeling of resentment, guilt, frustration. You're not enjoying your summer. Nothing is happening in a very calm, relaxed manner. All right, so once you've really thought about. What are your must do tasks each week and how long do they take? Right. And when I, I went back and looked at what I did last summer.

[00:09:32] So when I did this last summer, I recognized that each week I still was going to need to work about 15 hours a week over the course of each week for the things that were important to me. Within the business and then what I call my COO household time is usually about two hours a week. So I knew I was gonna have this need to plan for 15 hours of work time and two hours of household COO during the summer months. Now the next part of this is for you to gain an understanding of what are the realities of the rhythms in your home today, Meaning, what time do your kids wake up with activities that they like to do?

[00:10:14] What time are they available? Right? So if you, if your family that spends a lot of time at the pool, what time does the pool open? Right. Is the pool not open till 11:00 AM because maybe they have swim team practice? Does it open at nine? Right? You need to assess all of that. Do you have kids that take naps?

[00:10:30] How long is that? Do you like to have chunks of time during the day where your kids are entertaining themselves, right? And you have time for you. All of this needs to come into play so that you're building a plan that aligns with the realities of your life. Okay, so I'll give you some examples from my summer, last summer.

[00:10:49] So I've now moved into a stage of life where my daughter sleeps in later. She's in that, you know, rhythm. She used to wake up at five 30 in the morning. Now we're looking closer at 9:00 AM during the summer months. All right, so knowing, if she's waking up at 9:00 AM. She's a very slow mover In the morning, she likes a very relaxed morning.

[00:11:09] I knew that if we were gonna go out and do a fun like summertime day, feel spontaneous, go to the pool, whatever, those types of things would start in our house at around 10:00 AM. Right. This is what I know works for our family. I also know during the summer months we still love to eat dinner as a family.

[00:11:26] We usually eat outside a lot in the summer and we eat a little bit later. So kind of like, yeah, we kind of, you know, home by five-ish to be putzing around in the kitchen, all that kind of stuff. So I know the realities of our weekday summer rhythms are kind of available for summer fun from 10 to five.

[00:11:44] Okay? Now yours is gonna look. Different than mine, right? Maybe yours is gonna be, I have kids that wake up really early and we like to do stuff in the morning, but then we have a really quiet midday, like post-lunch. Everyone chills for a couple hours. So again, figure you're gonna need to discover this for yourself.

[00:12:02] Now, once you know, all right, here's the amount of time I need. So again, last summer, I'm gonna work with the 15 hours I knew I needed for work, and then knowing what the realities of our home life was. This gave me the information I needed to create what I believed was going to be an effective a day and a B day.

[00:12:22] So again, if an a day is a family forward day, what I did was, again, this was last summer. I'm sure it'll be different for me this summer. Last summer, what our a days looked like meant that I would get up, have some time to myself in the morning, and I would work. From eight to 10 in the morning. So now during the school year, I'm getting up at 5, 5 30.

[00:12:44] I don't wanna do that in the summer. I wanna enjoy my summer as well. So I'd sleep in a little bit later and I would work from eight to 10, and then on eight days starting at 10:00 AM This was a day free to play, to do whatever we wanted to do, and then whenever our fun time ended. Whether it was before dinner or after dinner, I knew I would need about 30 minutes just to check in with messages from the team, make sure nothing urgent had happened that I needed to adjust for for the next day.

[00:13:15] All right, so that was what a family forward a day looked like for me, was kind of two hours of some focused work, and then later in the day, a 30 minute catch up. Now that led us to having the entire day at 10:00 AM where I could step away from work and just enjoy summer. Right? If we're going to the pool, I'm not bringing my computer with me.

[00:13:34] I'm not trying to work from there. Or if we just decide on a whim to make a day trip somewhere, I'm not stressed about work. I. Now what our B days looked like last year, which was my more business forward or working day, I didn't, I still wanted to have time to do stuff even on B days. I personally did not wanna have an entire day dedicated for work.

[00:13:55] I. So on a B day, I would actually get up and work from eight to 11. So I was getting three hours in the morning, and then I would come back and work again from four to five in the afternoon. Now, sometimes that would shift and be five to six if we decided, you know, we were gonna do something that got us home a little bit later.

[00:14:15] But it essentially would mean that I would get three hours of work done in the morning. Then an hour of work towards the end of the day, which gave me four hours of work time. All right, so on my family forward days, I was only doing two and a half hours. It was all pretty much done in the morning. And then on my work forward days was where I was getting you know, a good four hours of work done now, because I knew I needed, you know, a good 15 hours of work time every week, I knew that this allowed me.

[00:14:44] To build in for myself three a days and two B days typically on any given week. cause that was gonna give me the time that I would need to align my work activities. Now, the key for these A days and B days to actually work. Lies in the communication with your family. at the start of summer, I was able to sit down, you know, my husband still just has to do W2, has his set hours.

[00:15:12] So this really was a conversation between my daughter and I of how we wanted to spend Monday through Fridays of our A days and B days. And at the start, you know, on a Sunday or the weekend before, we would actually look at the weather. Of the upcoming week, right? If we saw, hey, it looks like it's gonna be raining all day, Monday, Tuesday, then we'd be, I could say to her, Hey, I'm gonna treat those like my B Days.

[00:15:33] All right? Those are gonna be my, I'm gonna do a B day Monday, Tuesday, and then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, we're gonna do a days. So together we have this understanding of what that looks like. Now bonus pro tip for you, if you are using a family communication center we love our skylight calendar, alright?

[00:15:55] You can actually color code your days on your skylight calendar to represent a days B days, and you can plug in to remind your children of what that looks like. So they could see, oh, it's an a day. That means we're gonna go have summer fun starting at 10:00 AM. Or it's a B day. Okay? That means we have, you know, four hours, you know, again, I'm pulling from mine from last year.

[00:16:20] That means from like 11, or we have five hours from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM we're gonna be out doing fun stuff. And both before that and after that, mom's gonna be working, right? And so this creates a central communication tool and sets expectations. Now, this also means that when I'm not working over the summertime, you know, whether it's my non-working hours on a B day or if you know, it's.

[00:16:42] Pretty much the whole day on an A day, I am not stressing out going, what is all that stuff gonna get done? I know because I've structured my week to support my A days and B days ensuring I have the time that I need to get the things I said were important enough to, to focus on during the summer months.

[00:17:02] But again, if you're building this whole structure out in your head and you're not. Communicating with everybody what this means. Well, it's still gonna end, you know, end up creating a lot of confusion and chaos. Now there's one subtle thing I also wanna share with you that I wished I had started sooner when I was juggling, you know, building, building business and being, you know, home with little ones.

[00:17:27] And it is how we treat our weekdays versus our weekends. It is so easy. During the summer months to just have everything mesh together, right? A Wednesday feels like a Friday, which feels exactly like a Saturday. I would encourage you to keep a different rhythm Monday through Friday and treat weekends like weekends.

[00:17:54] So notice when I said we were talk, you know how my daughter and I structure our A days and B days? I'm doing that Monday through Friday, right? I want to have a weekend that is just a traditional weekend all summer long. 'cause that's when my husband is not working. And we can, as a family, do stuff right?

[00:18:12] Which means we have, we keep an honor. Our kind of breakfast routine, lunch routine, dinner routine Monday through Friday, even in the summer. Right. But Saturdays and Sundays, we're not labeling those A days and B days. Those are just weekends. And we're treating them the same as we do a weekend during the school year.

[00:18:35] Right. And it also helps create a little bit more, rhythm and routine for your kids as well. That makes going back to school a little bit easier if you don't let summer just turn into every day is a Saturday, right? We will let our daughters sleep in later on Saturdays and Sundays during you know, on the weekends, but even on summer.

[00:18:56] During the summer of course we let her sleep in. We're not getting, making her get up the same time she does during the school year, but we don't let it extend excessively. 'cause then it, it gets her completely outta whack. And then the a day B days don't work. Right? So if we're having an a day, which means I'm, I'm ready to roll, let's go have some fun at 10:00 AM it means that she is.

[00:19:15] Up having had her morning time and is also ready to go at 10:00 AM Right? So we're keeping some light structure now, of course. Can you, if you've had a really late night, 'cause it was 4th of July and you stayed out to watch the fireworks, you wanna sleep in the next day. Of course you always have the right to make those exceptions right?

[00:19:32] But they're the exceptions and they're, they're thought about intentionally. So if you ha you know, have anyone in your life that is, you know, heading into the summer months, knowing that they're gonna be navigating, I still have a life to live. I have things that need to get done, but I've got my kids home.

[00:19:48] And you believe that they would benefit here from a days and B days. Please, please share this episode with them. It has been a game changer for us. Now, I will be doing my work about two weeks before summer break to start creating that list of the things I know that need to get done on a weekly cadence for both work and home life, so that I will be crafting what my new A days and B days are gonna look like this summer.

[00:20:17] I have never had two summers in a row where my A days and B days were the same. Because life changes, right? So I will be fascinated to see what mine is going to look like as we roll into the summer. And then remember, once you create it, you have the right to tweak it as you test it out. I always view the first couple weeks of summer break as my testing stage with my A days and B days to make sure that they're working.

[00:20:40] And if they aren't, then I can tweak what they look like. All right, friends, remember? You deserve to enjoy summer as much as your kids, and you don't have to do it with stress, guilt, and resentment.