The #1 mistake you make in September
Every September, I watch smart, high-achieving people make the same mistake:
They treat Labor Day as the starting gun for a race no one actually wants to run.
August always feels like molasses to me.
Slow. Quiet. A little sticky.
Everybody’s slow to respond, and everyone seems to tolerate it.
Mainly because half the population is finally taking their big summer vacation, while the other half is crazed with getting kids back into school.
Then Labor Day hits—and suddenly it’s like the whole world took a goddamn Adderall.
Everyone snaps awake, looks at the calendar, and realizes:
“Holy shit. We’re in Q4. The holidays are around the corner. The year is damn near over!”
Cue the collective panic.
Cue the inboxes filling, the calendars cramming, the pressure mounting.
I actually heard a term for this the other day: The September Surge.
And here’s what I’ve noticed year after year:
By the time Thanksgiving rolls around (just a little over 2 months from now) most people are completely wiped out. Burned out. And wishing they could check out until New Year’s.
It’s a cycle.
One we’ve normalized.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Now, don’t get me wrong.
I’m not anti-sprint.
There’s nothing wrong with a focused push when it comes from alignment and desire.
But most people don’t sprint from alignment.
They sprint from obligation.
From an arbitrary timeline that says:
You MUST hit your biggest goals by December 31.
You MUST prove your worth in the final quarter.
You MUST wring yourself dry before the year is done, otherwise you haven't done good enough!
That’s not a sprint. That’s self-abandonment.
So what would it look like to do Labor Day differently?
To treat September not as the starting gun for another burnout cycle …
But as an invitation to presence?
Think about the song September by Earth, Wind & Fire.
Do you remember … the 21st night of September?
That song isn’t about cramming in one more deadline or panicking about the future.
It’s about BEING IN THE MOMENT.
About joy, music, dancing, and remembering.
What if that was your September energy?
What if, instead of letting the external calendar dictate your pace, you chose to be present for each moment—to actually remember it instead of letting it blur by?
Because here’s the truth: the sprint will come either way.
Life will always ask more of you in Q4.
But you get to choose what fuels that sprint:
Panic and proving.
Or clarity, presence, and desire.
One burns you out.
The other brings you ALIVE.
So this Labor Day, I’m inviting you to do it differently.
To make presence your radical act of resistance.
To let joy, not obligation, set the rhythm for your September.
Because joy isn’t frivolous. It’s fuel.
Presence isn’t passive. It’s power.
And when you anchor into that? You don’t just survive the sprint.
You actually have the energy, and the presence, to enjoy it.
Do you remember the 21st of September?
Do you want to?
Yow.
P.S. Inside Fuck the Hustle, we’re practicing presence as a radical act this September. Want in?