BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM

It’s hard to believe it’s almost August; if you’re anything like us, you’re probably wondering where June and July went. It happens every year: the long days, the plans you made back in May, the feeling that this summer would be different somehow. Then September arrives, and you’re not quite sure what you did with the time. This isn’t a character flaw or an inevitable feature of getting older. There are neurological reasons summer disappears the way it does, and researchers have found specific things that help.

How routine and busyness both speed summer up

There are two reasons summer slips away, and they work against each other in a way that makes the problem tricky to solve on your own.

The first is routine. When your days follow the same pattern (same commute, same lunch, same evening scroll), your brain stops recording them in detail. “If something is mundane or routine, you don’t record it as strongly,” explains Martin Wiener, PhD, associate professor of cognitive and behavioral neuroscience at George Mason University. “The brain does this on purpose because it doesn’t need that information.” Work through a summer without changing much, and September arrives with few clear memories of the months before it.

The second is doing too much. When your weekends are packed with cookouts, road trips, and pool days, your brain is focused on doing rather than tracking time. Days feel full in the moment but blur together in hindsight, says Lila Davachi, PhD, a professor of psychology at Columbia University who studies memory. You can sprint through summer and still feel like it slipped. The lesson is that both extremes backfire. The research points toward a balance, and you have more control over it than you might expect.

Pay attention on purpose, even briefly

Mindfulness is the most overused word in wellness, but what the research points to is genuinely simple: pay attention, on purpose.

“Tell yourself that you are going to prioritize everything that’s happening around you and be more mindful of those events,” Wiener says. “As a result, they can seem to last longer.” No app or ritual required. Commitment to noticing is enough.

A Buddhist nun and mindfulness teacher in Bali frames it in one question: “Mindfulness is really the practice of connecting the here and now with what you are doing. Just ask a very simple question: What am I doing?” Answering it, even for a moment, pulls your attention back from wherever it drifted.

Try at least one new thing

Novelty is one of the more reliable memory tools around. Research shows that doing something new helps you remember other, more ordinary events from the same day. You might recall your Tuesday morning more clearly just because you tried a different lunch spot.

Author and wellness writer Liz Moody recommends one new thing every day and insists it doesn’t have to be significant. “It can be really, really tiny,” she says. Take a different route to work. Sit somewhere new at the coffee shop. Then add one bigger new experience per month.

“The daily novelty is going to make your brain pay attention in the moment,” Moody says. “When you look back, those new experiences will be like exclamation points that supercharge your memory, so you can think, Oh, January was the month I went to that concert, and February was the month I tried to learn Spanish.”

At the start of summer, look at your calendar and pick one new thing per month. By September, you’ll have a handful of anchors that make the whole season feel more like a story.

Leave some room in your schedule

That’s the counterintuitive part. “The magic lies in the balance of it all,” Davachi says. “If you add too many experiences, then it will feel like you don’t have time.” The very busyness that makes summer feel rich in the moment can make it feel short in hindsight.

Wiener recommends building in breaks after stretches of activity, a few hours of rest rather than running straight from one thing to the next. “Break it up so you’re not constantly doing new things all day,” he says. “By the end of the day, you won’t be recording much new information.” An exhausted brain stops taking notes.

Your personal balance point will look different from someone else’s. But if September keeps arriving before you’re ready for it, adding more to the calendar probably isn’t the answer. Leaving more room might be.

Write it down before it fades

Journaling might be the most overlooked memory tool available. Writing about your day, including moments that stood out or small things you don’t want to forget, is a form of memory reactivation: it strengthens the neural trace of what happened. “You’re increasing the probability that you’re going to be able to remember something in a month or a year,” says Davachi.

Research suggests that writing by hand processes information more deeply than typing, though the habit matters more than the method. If journaling feels like homework, reflection works too. Taking a few minutes every few days to think through a recent experience, or sharing it with someone, has a similar effect.

Summer doesn’t get shorter as you get older. We just tend to notice it less. Luckily, as long as we’re intentional, it’s not as difficult or time-consuming as we might think to do something about it.

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