There’s something about September that makes the 9–5 feel a little more… 9–5.

The days are getting shorter, the sun is setting earlier, and suddenly leaving work at 5 p.m. doesn’t feel quite as early as it did a few weeks ago. In the summer, you can walk out of the office with hours of daylight ahead of you. Now, you might walk outside and immediately feel like the day is basically over.

I always find this time of year a little harder for motivation. It’s not necessarily that I don’t like working, but when you spend most of your daylight hours at work, it can start to feel like your entire day revolves around it. Wake up, get ready, commute, work, commute home, eat dinner, go to bed, and do it all over again.

And I don’t want my weekdays to feel like something I just have to get through until Friday.

The 9–5 is a part of life, but it shouldn’t feel like it’s all of it. So as we head into the darker months, I’m trying to be a little more intentional about making room for life between 9 and 5.

Make Your Mornings Worth Getting Up For

I’m not about to tell you that you need to wake up at 5 a.m. and have a colour-coded morning routine before your first coffee. Please.

But when the mornings start getting darker, I do think there’s something to be said for giving yourself a few little reasons to actually want to get out of bed.

Make a coffee you enjoy. Put on a playlist while you get ready. Give yourself enough time that you’re not running out the door with one shoe on. Wear an outfit you’re excited about, even if it’s just a random Tuesday.

As someone who loves fashion, getting dressed is genuinely one of the easiest ways I can make an otherwise ordinary workday feel a little more fun. Maybe no one at the office cares that you finally figured out the perfect way to style your cardigan, but you do.

When it’s dark outside and you’re already tempted to crawl back under the covers, sometimes the little things are enough to make the morning feel like something other than the beginning of another workday.

Use the Daylight While You Have It

Once the sun starts setting earlier, daylight suddenly feels like something you need to actually use.

If you have a lunch break, go outside. Take a walk around the block, grab a coffee, or just sit somewhere that isn’t your desk for a few minutes. Even getting outside for 15 minutes can make a workday feel very different from one where you barely see the sun.

At work, we’ve started jokingly taking “smoke breaks,” despite the fact that none of us smoke. Sometimes it’s just an excuse to stand outside in the sun for a few minutes in complete silence, and sometimes someone brings out bubbles. It sounds slightly ridiculous, but a bit of fresh air and sunlight can make you feel like a person again instead of someone who has been staring at a screen for six hours.

If you work from home, this is your reminder to not accidentally spend the entire day inside just because you can.

There will be plenty of dark mornings and early sunsets ahead, so for now, I’m taking advantage of every little bit of daylight I can get, even if that means taking a completely unnecessary smoke break with no smoking involved.

Put Something in Your Calendar That Isn’t Work

I’ve realized that having something in my calendar that has absolutely nothing to do with work can make a huge difference in how a weekday feels.

It doesn’t have to be a big night out. Maybe you’re meeting a friend for dinner, going to a workout class, grabbing a coffee after work, or finally trying that restaurant you’ve been talking about for weeks.

Sometimes just knowing there’s something waiting for you at the end of the day makes the hours at your desk feel a little less repetitive.

And I think this is also why I’m trying to stop saving everything for the weekend. If there’s an outfit I want to wear, why am I waiting until Saturday? If there’s a recipe I want to make, why does it have to be a Sunday dinner? If I want to go somewhere, why can’t I go on a Wednesday?

The weekend will still be there.

Of course, I love having a Saturday and Sunday with no work in sight, but I don’t want those two days to carry the entire responsibility of making me feel like I actually have a life.

Let Some Nights Be Boring

At the same time, I don’t want to turn this into a list of things you should be doing after work to make the most of every second of your life.

Because sometimes you are tired.

Sometimes the best thing you can do after a long day is come home, change into sweatpants, make dinner, watch your show and go to bed early.

I think we put so much pressure on ourselves to make our free time productive that even our evenings can start to feel like another to-do list. Work out. Read. Cook. See friends. Clean. Learn something. Become a better person.

Can we not? Sometimes you can just exist.

Have a hobby because you enjoy it, not because you’re going to be good at it. Watch something because you’re obsessed with it. Go for a walk because you feel like it. Spend an evening doing absolutely nothing because that’s what you needed that day.

Making room for your life doesn’t always mean adding more to it.

Stop Waiting for Friday

I’ll still be excited when Friday comes around. Obviously.

But I don’t want to spend five days of every week wishing them away just because the weekend is coming.

Most of life is made up of ordinary Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays. The coffee before work. The outfit you really liked. The ridiculous smoke break where nobody actually smoked. Dinner with a friend. A random Wednesday night spent on the couch. The little plans you almost didn’t make.

None of these things are particularly groundbreaking, but they’re your life too.

So as the days get shorter and the sun starts setting earlier, I’m trying not to let that convince me that the day is over just because the workday is.

Maybe the goal isn’t to squeeze more into every weekday or make every night exciting. Maybe it’s just to make a little more room for the things that make the hours between 9 and 5 feel a little more like yours.

Love, Laura