It’s that time of the year, when it’s peak summer, but you start to see the Back to School commercials. We’re well past the halfway mark of summer, and you’re looking forward to cool weather but not necessarily ready for the routines to start back up.

As a lifelong teacher, in the traditional classroom or not, I love this time of year. It’s the perfect time to start getting organized and thinking about how to get on the right track, just in time for the buzzy energy of Fall. Fall is the perfect time to be your most focused self. Winter is for hibernation, Spring is for dreaming, and Summer is for playing, so let’s get it in.

But lately I have been thinking more about not just how to do more but also how to get more out of what I am doing. I love to be productive. Hello, eldest Latina daughter. I am a doer. But I also love, and I mean love, to rest. So I am constantly in a battle between productivity and rest. So this season, I am working on finding a rhythm where these coexist so I can work towards my goals without feeling drained or disappointed.

Those of us who are working to reclaim a language can feel this way. Like, we are working forever, and we can hit a point where we wonder, what is it all for? It is a lot of hard work to learn a language. It takes time, money, and bandwidth to create an immersive life or take time to practice. All of this is challenging for any language learner. But if, on top of that, you are a heritage Spanish speaker, you are also working through the emotions of identity and belonging, which can feel like an additional weight. Therefore, it is important for our community to not only consider how we are working towards our goals logically and emotionally, but also how we are doing so in a way that feels sustainable and even energizing.

A few things that I’ve been doing to see if they can help with the work:

Put it on the calendar.

A couple of weeks ago, I did a time audit. Each day, I wrote a quick note about how I spent each hour of my waking day. At the end of the week, I created categories (personal time, personal responsibilities, work, cultural work, and relationships). I was disappointed to see that my time was not reflecting my values. But that’s what happens when you don’t plan for your day. It gets away from you, and you’re wondering, where does the time go?

Time Blocking

Time blocking, like meal prep, is one of those things that you know you need to do; it will make your future time so much easier. And yet, each week comes and goes, and you forget. So, a couple of weeks ago, I set a calendar reminder for each Sunday to time-block. If you are not getting to your priorities, what is the task before the task that can get you there? I wasn’t time-blocking, so I set a calendar reminder to time-block, which leads me to my next strategy.

Make a habit/ Take away the load of planning.

We have so many decisions to make in a day. It helps take the mental load of planning off you while you are already doing something hard. That we can focus on just showing up. My best workouts are ones where all I have to do is show up. There are a bajillion free resources online that you can access on your own time, but I don’t want to have to search or plan. I want to show up because that alone is time-consuming.

If you’re trying to integrate something new into your life, find a way to show up. What is a program, a habit, a community that you can show up to because the planning has been done for you? As adults, we have so many responsibilities that we don’t give nearly enough credit to just showing up. Make a habit of putting it on your calendar and just showing up.

Small win

When you do show up, celebrate it. And showing up looks different for everyone. Someone’s showing up will be listening. Someone will be speaking. Someone else will say they need to do it consistently. Whatever your version of showing up is, when you do it, celebrate it.

Habits come not only from doing something repeatedly but also from tying a reward to the action. So figure out what feels like the smallest version of an approachable goal. Do it. Celebrate. Expand the target slightly. Do it. Celebrate. Repeat.

Now, to be clear, the whole point of this process is not to get more done. It is actually to feel better about what does get done. My goal is to be intentional about making sure my priorities get done. And, most of all, I want to be able to enjoy the time that I am not working on my priorities, to rest or play. Because the more we are intentional with our time, the more we can feel harmony between productivity and rest, and play the long game of reclaiming language and culture.