I love September. You can feel the change of season in the air, there are new, fresh notebooks to fill up, and, for me, there’s cake of the birthday variety. 🎂
I just wish this month didn’t also always seem to show up with a burst of go-go-go, rush-rush-rush, get-it-done-before-the-end-of-the-year energy. No matter how well we plan for it, the urgency, or feeling that everything is urgent, shows up on September’s doorstep.
But what if we didn’t let it in? What if instead of inviting in the chaos we chose to fall into flow?
Flow, as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, described it, is:
…the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.
Sign me up!
Unfortunately, you can’t magically create flow. But you can create the conditions for it.
If you’d like to invite a little more flow into your fall, make room for the four conditions Csikszentmihalyi introduced in his book:
You step into September with the best of intentions, but pretty quickly all those projects you said you’d get back to after summer are now kicking down your door. It’s like they, along with everyone in your life, have woken up from their summer slumber and demand attention. Hard to focus when everything is hitting, all at once.
I’d love to say the solve was as simple as putting a few focus blocks on your schedule and voilà, focus! But by now you know that’s not how focus blocks work. The first step is creating the container. The second, harder step, is protecting it: set your blocks for the times you’re actually primed for focus, bring just one task in with you, and guard it against everything else trying to get in.
Around this time of year, we start to realize that we’re not as close to our annual goals as we had hoped we’d be. To address this issue, we take one of two routes:
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We get over-ambitious and try to cram it all in, which may help us reach the goal but at what cost?
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We flag the goal as impossible, so why bother?
Luckily, there’s a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth option. We can take a close look at the goals we set 9 months ago, the resources available now, and determine if the goal needs adjustment. That might be dropping it entirely, deferring it, extending the deadline, or maybe lowering the bar to something we can reach with just a bit of stretch.
I’ve already talked about goals above, so let’s focus on the feedback side of things for a minute. Because in September you are likely drowning in emails, reminders, and notifications. People who were quiet all summer have reappeared fresh and more than ready to share their ideas and opinions.
This is where the connection between clear goals and feedback is important. If you do the work to get clear on what your goals are now, you can start to separate the signal from the noise and focus on the feedback that directly correlates to those goals.
September can be overwhelming, and it’s near-impossible to trust your own read on things when you’re too busy just putting one foot in front of the other.
This aspect of flow isn’t about being capable at the task. It’s about trusting your capability to figure things out. The problem is that overwhelm makes it hard to see that clearly. When everything’s coming at you at once, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that you’ve been here before, buried under more than you thought you could handle, and gotten through it anyway.
You can’t control what energy you, or those around you, will show up with in September. But you can create the conditions to make the transition into fall a little more flowful.
~ Maghan
For when you realize those small interruptions are costing you a lot more than you think:
The Engagement Threshold: The Key to Consistent Creativity and Productivity
For when you’re carrying more than this season can hold:
Is the Scope of Your World Too Big?
For when you’re listening for feedback on projects that no longer need you to:
Liberate Your Team’s Bandwidth by Giving Them Permission to Release Outdated Tasks
For five ways to build your self-trust:
The Five Keys to Overcoming the Air Sandwich
Bring Flow to Your Business This Fall
Our next cohort of Find Your Business Flow starts October 5th. This cohort-based program is for solo- and micropreneurs wearing every hat and spending more time on busywork than on the work they started their business for. Instead of borrowing someone else’s system, we’ll help you build one that fits how you actually work, and create the conditions that create flow in your business. Want to find out more? Email me, and I’ll make sure you’re among the first to know when applications open.
Mark your calendars for our September events, open to our paid subscribers:
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Leadership Strategy Session (LSS): Wednesday, September 9, 2026, at 11:00 am PDT
September’s Focus: Leading your team out of reaction and into the kind of focus that actually moves things forward. -
Monthly Momentum Call (MMC): Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at 11:00 am PDT
September’s Focus: Finding your way back to the work that matters, even in a month built for reacting instead of responding.
Free subscribers: now might also be a great time for you to give our paid subscription a try. $10 a month will get you all our premium resources, our two monthly calls, the full digital suite of Momentum Planners, and more. Cancel anytime.
The Momentum Planners were built to keep your most important work front and center. Download the free version of our September planners, now available only to subscribers.
Paid subscribers can access the full suite of dated planners below. 👇 If you don’t see them, please make sure you’re logged in to your paid account.
