You’re a few weeks into the holidays now.
How’s it going?
In schools we’re so used to having structure in place for the school day, week, half term and year.
The summer holidays offer us a great expanse of time that’s completely, or largely, free.
It’s such a refreshing change to our norm. Even writing this I can feel my entire body breathe in the freedom.
But… why is it that I, and so many headteachers, find the summer holidays don’t turn out to be as good as we’d hoped?
Many have told me: “I don’t like who I become in the summer holidays.”
They’ve not become bad people, just a bit unrecognisable to themselves.
A week or two of holiday really is freedom. But six weeks is a long time, and it’s understandable that people struggle with that much unstructured space.
So what can we do?
I like to put some structure into my holiday. I love a big, A3 paper weekly planner.
- I plot all the fun things in pink.
- All the fixed meetings in black.
- Exercise in purple.
- House things I want to do in orange (I love a painting and garden project, as you’ll see on my Instagram).
You get the idea.
Then I plot any work priorities in a way that works for me, in blue.
What I love about the planner is that it’s not a list, it has time blocks so I don’t overload days and weeks with unrealistic expectations.
This has worked well for me, and many heads I know, because I get the right balance of a break, and don’t lose who I am in the sea of the six week summer holidays.
But at Easter, one of the wonderful heads in my Mastermind, Vicki Lord, shared how she’d taken this a step further.
I loved it so much it’s now part of all my holiday planning, and I thought you might like it too.
Vicki started with an idea from Jay Shetty: your values aren’t what you say they are, they’re what your life shows.
Here’s how it works.
- Look backwards.
Ask yourself: when have I felt most alive, proud, or like my best self?
For me, it’s giving talks, winning Pitch Fest, playing with my band, catching up with my nieces, time with the Mastermind heads who are so inspiring.
Pull out what’s underneath each one, and you’ll find your real values. Mine came down to expression, connection, growth, excellence, belonging, energy. - Then go the other way. When have you felt frustrated or disconnected?
What value felt violated?
If I’m sloppy, and I miss something because I didn’t follow one of my checklists — that’s not our value of evolve excellence, that’s really just sloppy.
Not having a difficult conversation I need to have — that goes against integrity.
Not helping when I can — that isn’t leading with love.
- Last step, and the one that mattered most.
Separate what you’ve inherited from what’s really yours.
I’m a maximiser — everything at its best. The reality is, it’s right to be a satisficer at times, and the key is knowing which is best when.
Vicki took it a step further still. She fed her answers into AI as prompts, and asked it to help her plan a summer break built around her values.
That’s what’s different on my A3 planner now. The pink, fun things aren’t random, they’re chosen because they hit the values that recharge me.
If your holiday has started to feel like a lot of space, or maybe too much work, this could be worth twenty minutes with a cup of tea. You’ve still got weeks left — enough to redirect them, if they need it.
Want more of this kind of thinking dropped into your inbox each week? Sign up for my weekly tips: ukheadsup.com/weeklytips/
And if you’d like to talk about work rather than just write about it, Jack from my team is around this summer. He speaks with heads about exactly this, every week — the stuck feeling, the team friction, the conversation you’re avoiding. It’s not a sales call. It’s just a conversation, with someone who gets it.
Sonia ❤️
(With thanks to Vicki Lord for sharing this one with me.)