Many of us are feeling a pit of sadness in our stomachs as summer comes to an end. 

What’s behind the sadness? I realized that we (read: I!) crave downtime.  We (I?) enjoy having the time and the space to connect to ourselves and to the people around us (as we discussed recently in “The Gift of Summer”) without homework, without schedules, and without deadlines.

Looking forward and thinking ahead, I came across the idea of “Untouchable Days” by Neil Pasricha, in a Harvard Business Review article.  

Neil suggests a weekly “untouchable day”.  A weekly “day'' may be difficult for some – but the concept of creating “untouchable time” is accessible to all of us. 

Here’s what we should all aim to do: Block out times in our calendars that we become unreachable.  Untouchable.  These days become our secret weapons.  These are the days that we can bring the calmness and the connectedness of the summer back into the rest of the year. 

On these days, we are productive.  We take time to read.  To learn a new skill. To enjoy a nice drive. To “not be hectic”.  To separate our work lives. Our home lives. To reconnect to ourselves, to the people we 💕, and to G-d.  

On these days or these hours (or even minutes!) we walk away from our phones, we shut off our Wifi, we take off our apple watches, we close our computers, and we take some time to ourselves. (I personally think that we can keep our AirPods for music, but now I’m thinking this is sounding like an ad for Apple).

These days are best when planned in advance so that they become “untouchable.”  Should an emergency come up, they can be changed to a different day in the week, but best not to push them off to the next week.  When scheduling this time on the calendar, the word UNTOUCHABLE should be in all caps.  

Because, 

It’s obvious why! 

Neil suggests, on these untouchable days, picture yourself in a bulletproof car surrounded by thick glass on all sides so nothing gets in. (Though that thought is making me a little claustrophobic to be honest!) Nothing gets in. Nothing gets out. Meetings and text alerts and phone calls bounce off the windshield. And we will feel refreshed and renewed after each untouchable day. 

(Cell phone stays out of the car. Except if you want to spend some of that time calling an old friend to say hello, or calling someone close to let them know how much you appreciate them in your life. But ideally the time should be spent alone to increase productivity, says Neil. And he’s the boss of Untouchable Days.) 

Let’s all hold onto a little bit of summer by scheduling these UNTOUCHABLE times into our own calendars TODAY!

And btw, I don’t see why we shouldn’t schedule these days for our children too! Let them have a day on the calendar to reconnect with themselves every so often. 

This is a first for me too. But I’m excited to try it! Feel to hit reply with feedback and we can decide as a group how we like— 

UNTOUCHABLE days. 

💕, Shifi