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Erin, welcome to unlearning work, where we empower you to redesign your job by rethinking work habits, behaviors and strategies. I'm your host. Erin Merideth, a work behavior enthusiast and leadership strategist, join me as I explore various work related topics and provide practical insights and real life examples. We'll examine the nature of work from the ground up and deliver bite size episodes with actionable advice twice a month.
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Welcome to unlearning work, the podcast where we trade hustle culture for human centered habits and help high performers design systems that actually work with their brains, not against them. I'm Erin Merideth, behavioral researcher, leadership strategist and founder of unlearning work. Today we're talking about one of my favorite seasonal resets, The Back to School moment. Even if you don't have kids at home, September always carries a certain energy. The air feels different, the routines sharpen, and there's this collective sense of beginning again. And here's the truth, this season isn't just about kids sharpening pencils and meeting new teachers. It's about all of us finding a way to hit refresh, because in the workplace, so many of us are carrying around stale systems, outdated routines and the weight of last season's unfinished work. So today I want to share how you can harness this momentum through lessons from school and use it to transform the way you work this fall.
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Why does back to school energy matter and why does this season feel so powerful? Think back to when you were a kid. September meant new notebooks with crisp, clean pages, a new backpack, sometimes still smelling like plastic, new teachers, new classmates, even if you felt nervous, there was something fresh and hopeful about it. Psychologists call these temporal landmarks, moments when we naturally feel more motivated to change, because it feels like the start of something other days that are like this are New Year's Day, birthdays, Mondays and, yes, the first day of school. When my kids were young, I used to love taking them back to school shopping. We'd pick out binders, colorful pens, sticky notes, probably too many. But it wasn't about the supplies. It was about the mindset. I watched them come home and carefully label dividers or lay out clothes for the first day. It was their way of signaling, I'm ready for a new chapter.
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And here's the question, why don't we give ourselves that same permission at work in my corporate VP days, September was always tough. Summer had slowed things down,
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vacations, half empty offices, projects dragging. By fall, we were supposed to pick up the pace, but no one hit reset. We just rolled the same meetings, the same overloaded projects right into September, no fresh energy, no sharpened pencils, just grind. But later, when I began consulting, I saw how powerful it could be to intentionally reset one manufacturing site I worked with, traded traded September as season two of their team huddles, they changed the format, added visuals and literally announced Welcome to Season Two. That simple shift boosted engagement because it felt like a restart, not a continuation of exhaustion.
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There are many problems at work that could use a new perspective and thinking about what this means for you and your work, let's name the problems that most of us carry into the fall and how a back to school perspective can reframe them.
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The first one is a stale routine so many workplaces are stuck in ruts, meetings that haven't changed format in years, reports that no one reads but everyone fills out. It's like carrying last year's dog eared math notebook into a brand new class. Uninspiring.
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When I was at a big tech company, I remember dreading certain Monday meetings. They were long, repetitive, and by the time we got to decisions, half the room had mentally checked out. I wish someone had said, it's a new season. Let's rethink this. Instead, we kept pouring old coffee into the same mug. So the back to school lesson is reset the format. What if you treated September like a clean notebook? Ask if we were starting fresh. How would we run this meeting or track this project?
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The second problem that could use a new perspective at work is overloaded. To Do lists after summer, the inbox is overflowing. Projects didn't move as fast as you hoped. The instinct pile on more.
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Try to catch up by doing everything. When I first launched my own company, I made this mistake. I came back from a family trip in an August with guilt about all the things I hadn't finished. My solution was to double down, longer hours, bigger lists, more coffee. The result was I was burnt out by mid September. So the back to school lesson here is prune before you pile on just like kids toss out last year's broken crayons or half used binders. You can let go of tasks that no longer serve your goals. You can archive, you can automate or simply decide it doesn't matter anymore.
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The third problem at work that could use a new perspective is Team disengagement. After a summer of scattered schedules, many teams limp into fall. People are unfocused. Motivation is low, and projects feel sluggish. So one tech team I coached described September as like the day after a substitute teacher leaves. You know class happened, but no one knows what got done.
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So the back to school lesson here is write a syllabus. Students want to know what's due, when it's due, and how it will be graded. Adults crave that clarity too. Imagine starting your teens fall with a one page syllabus. Here are the three priorities. Here's how we'll measure success, and here's what's non negotiable.
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So how do we actually use this back to school energy at work and harness the momentum? Well, the step one is pick your reset ritual. When my husband and I co founded our systems integration system for retail. We had a tradition every fall we'd reorganize our workspace. We'd get new whiteboards, fresh markers, even just clearing the clutter. It wasn't about esthetics. It was about energy that novelty sparks dopamine and dopamine fuels motivation. Step two, name your season. Theme. Schools do this naturally things themes like senior year science fair season, my clients love doing this at work. One team called their fall the season of clarity. Another chose the collaboration semester. Suddenly they had a rallying cry instead of just a pile of tasks.
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Step three, redesign one core system. You don't have to overhaul everything. Choose one area where friction is highest. Maybe it's your one on ones that always run long, or maybe it's your email drown in you redesign that one system and watch the ripple effect a client of mine and inspired starter, used September to reimagine her Project Tracker. She swapped her overwhelming spreadsheet for a simple Kanban board. Within weeks, her stress dropped and her productivity rose.
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Step Four anchor, accountability. Students have grades, tests, teachers, adults need accountability too. Pair with a colleague schedule calendar reminders or set visual progress markers. When I was writing my first course, I told a colleague text me every Friday and ask if I wrote my three pages. It was awkward at first, but it worked that external accountability kept me moving through a season when I easily could have stalled.
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Now I have a four step challenge for you, and I want you to treat it like the first day of school assignment we all remember.
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So the first step is to identify one area of your work or life that feels stale, heavy or stuck.
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This part is about awareness. Before you can create change, you have to name the part of your life or work that's draining you. Often we carry things forward simply because they're always been there, old habits, repetitive meetings, outdated routines. They don't energist. Energize us anymore, but we keep doing them out of inertia. For me, this season of becoming an empty nester has made that especially clear with my kids out of the house. The structure that once guided my time is gone. At first, I filled the empty space with more work, but I realized that wasn't what I wanted. The real question was, what area of my life feels heavy and how do I lighten it so my time reflects what really matters at work, maybe for you, it's the Monday meeting that drags on without purpose, or the inbox that rolls your mornings, or the project that feels like busy work. Whatever it is naming it is powerful, because once you see it, you can choose to reset it.
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Step two, ask yourself, if this was a new school year, how would I approach it differently? This step is about reframing kids don't enter a new grade with last year's homework.
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Work, they're handed clean notebooks, new teachers and a schedule that resets expectations. Adults rarely give themselves that grace. We just drag last year's chaos forward. Reframing means asking if I could start fresh, what would I design differently?
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I have a client of mine who realized her weekly check ins were stale and unproductive. She reframed them as development dialogs with new questions and a new purpose. The reset wasn't cosmetic. It changed the energy of her team. For me, reframing shows up in my evenings. I don't have to fill them with work anymore. Instead, I treat them like a new class schedule, one night for writing, one for reading, one for rest. It's not about adding more. It's about creating intentional structure. Reframing takes what feels like Same old, same old, and turns it into something with new energy, new meaning and new possibility.
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Step three, pick one small ritual to mark the reset. Rituals are symbolic actions that signal to our brains something new is beginning in behavioral science, rituals act as temporal markers. They create a clear break between then and now, and we need that because without a marker, our old habits creep right back in. For students, rituals are fresh pencils, new backpacks or labeling binders. For adults, rituals might be as simple as renaming a meeting, buying a fresh notebook or reorganizing your desk. For me, my ritual was Reclaiming my kids study corner. I turned it into a quiet reading nook. Every time I sit there, I'm reminded this is my season, and I get to fill it with whatever matters now that physical marker helps me hold the line between old patterns and new possibilities. The ritual itself doesn't have to be be big. It just has to be meaningful enough that your brain registers. I'm starting fresh.
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Step four, anchor, accountability, change doesn't last on intention alone. Without structure, our best resets dissolve into old habits. Accountability is the scaffolding that holds new behaviors in place until they become natural in school. Accountability comes in the form of teachers, report cards and deadlines. Adults need to create their own version of that. One client's team used a giant wall calendar to track progress on a single milestone every week. That visible accountability kept them from slipping back into chaos. For me, accountability is twofold. I honor my husband's memory as a reminder that time is precious and not to be wasted on what doesn't matter, and practically, I've asked my daughter to call me out if she sees my Friday calendar filling up with calls instead of staying my creative half day
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accountability isn't about punishment. It's about support. It's the nudge that helps you keep your reset alive long enough for it to become who you are.
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Here's your challenge. Step one, identify the one area that feels heavy. Step two, reframe it as if you were starting fresh. Step three, mark the reset with a small ritual. And step four, anchor it with accountability so it lasts because here's the truth, whether it's September becoming an empty nester or the life changing realization that time is finite, every season is an invitation, an invitation to stop carrying last year's homework, to unlearn what doesn't serve you, and to make the most of the time you've been given. If this episode sparked ideas, share it with a teammate who could use a reset this fall and download our app for access to the back to school reset for work worksheet, where you can design your own season theme and pick your reset ritual
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if you're ready to work with clarity, confidence and momentum, there's a roadmap. First take the work style quiz and discover how you uniquely think about work and plan and follow through. And then step two, there's a work your way course which helps you learn to design your days and decisions in alignment with your strengths. That's how you stop chasing hustle culture and start creating a work life that feels lighter, more purposeful and sustainable. Until next time, here's to working your way, not the hard way. You.
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