What's Your Golden Thread This Month? (Quick Summer Review + Look Ahead)

This is the transcript of The Refreshing Leadership Podcast episode: What's Your Golden Thread This Month? (Quick Summer Review + Look Ahead), published on 14th September 2026.

Welcome back to the Refreshing Leadership Podcast. It feels good to be back. I've had a proper break, it's been a long summer, and now we are very much into September mode.

Before we hurtle into autumn, I did want to take time to take stock. I have completed my July and August to-do lists, so I actually do have a handle on that granularity I talk about - what are those little things that made a difference this summer? Not just the big trips or the more obviously memorable moments. I've done that exercise, but don't worry, I'm not going to sit here and rattle through it all with you. I do have a few things I'm taking from this summer, and they influence how I want the rest of the year to feel.

I want to talk about that, and I want to talk about a couple of concepts today that I hope will be helpful as we all look ahead to autumn.

The idea of a golden thread

The first thing I want to talk about is the idea of a golden thread.

This has been a really special summer for me - seeing friends, family, various trips, visits, experiences, lots of fun. We also had some family health issues and a bereavement, so it's been ups and downs as well. At the start of the summer, my goal was that I wanted August to feel lazy.

As we were returning from a trip at the end of July and teetering into August, I quickly realised that between trips, another small trip, various social things planned, and seeing the people you don't always get to see during the busyness of term time and work - August was not going to be empty. I did panic a little bit, because I had been hanging on for August.

I asked myself: what is it about August that I want to feel different? Two things came up.

The first was that I wanted a real break in my normal work rhythm. That's why the podcast was on hold - that had been planned in advance. I also try to schedule client work around August, having sessions just before and just after, and people are doing their own holiday things anyway, so that works pretty well. I hadn't taken on any other work in August this year. Sometimes I go and do some work at London Business School with the MBA students, but this year I wasn't doing any of that. So I had actually kept a really good empty August for myself - it didn't turn out that way, but at least I had done that level of protection.

The other thing I wanted - and I realise this might make me sound like a really boring person - was some time to do some deep organising. I wanted to get to the end of August and feel that my spaces, my clothes, my stuff were a bit lighter and more intentional, with a better system in place to carry me through the busy autumn months.

So the thing I want to highlight here is this idea of a golden thread. It could be a really busy month or a quieter month, but I like the idea of asking: what's the golden thread of that month?

Having pushed work to either side of August, I wanted that golden thread to be a theme of organising. So when I did have the odd bit of time - whether that was 15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour - I wanted to know I had a little project on, taking tiny categories at a time. Only my T-shirts, only my cards, only the chargers in the house, and organising those.

For me this is therapeutic, it's grounding, it's an opportunity to go slow and to feel like I'm aware of my possessions. I feel like otherwise things can feel a little bit chaotic. And what I didn't want was to open up a huge Pandora's box of organising and feel like I was at the bottom of a mountain because it hadn't been done for a while. I wanted it to feel calm and grounding.

In the end, August didn't look quite how I imagined it when I was back in June or July. I ended up taking on some work I felt I couldn't refuse and was really excited about. We had the family health challenges and the bereavement - all unexpected. So it was by no means an empty August. But because I had set that little intention at the start, even though life was unpredictable, I got to the end of August feeling like I had genuinely moved the needle on that organising goal.

And that's the thing I want to put out here. At the start of any month, we can create that tiny little intention. What do we want this month to feel like? If this has been a great month for our vision, our goal, our word of the year - what would that look like? What's that one or two things we'd love from this month?

This is something I've been doing in different ways every month, because once you do that kind of review, it naturally puts you into a position to want to do that look ahead. I'm going to do that with even more clarity and intention now, because I've seen how it carried me through a month and gave me what I wanted from it. Summer did what it did. My grass turned yellow. But I felt like I moved forward, and that's really helpful.

How the golden thread works for career and work

Just to give you a few other ways you could put this into practice - this is very much something that can be helpful from a career and work perspective.

We know how busy work can get. Doing this ahead of busy months is going to be particularly helpful, because yes, we put extra energy into getting things done. But the idea that we could get to the end of the month and feel like we've been on a treadmill - pedalling hard but not really moving anywhere - that's not a position we want to find ourselves in.

When I'm coaching clients in a busy period, the coaching gives them that time to step back and ask: okay, I understand I'm pedalling really hard right now, but what's the big picture thread for this period that I also want to keep in focus? Then you can make those tiny investments - maybe an internal networking piece you want to keep up with, or something from a thought leadership perspective.

Whatever those extras are, holding them in view as you look ahead at the month makes it so much more likely that they'll actually happen.

You can be hit by a tidal wave of a month, but if you've done that little bit of thinking about what the thread can be from a work or career perspective, it can be the difference between a business-as-usual, busy treadmill month and a busy month where you actually move the needle forward.

I'm specifically going to be taking the organising golden thread forward into the next few months. Once you start, you just get more and more ideas of things you want to organise. I really do hope I can keep going with that at least through September - which is a beautiful organising window - if not all the way to December.

Creating space

The other thing I wanted to talk about was the idea of creating space.

In my case, I did that in the work category, but we could apply this to social, or to whichever other categories of our life we have some control over. I deliberately created that work pause in August.

Now, if you're an employee, you'll naturally have holiday time, so some of that happens anyway. But if you're working through August and taking holiday at another time, you could still dial down what you're taking on. Cal Newport talks about August being a time to go at not full 100% - you don't take on the bigger projects, you basically tread water. That's another way of creating space.

Having that empty calendar meant that when a couple of really plum things came through for me, I was able to be agile and say yes. Two last-minute things - both high-profile senior leadership team coaching work, exactly the kind I want to be doing more of. When they came through, I was able to make the time and space and hopefully be extremely responsive in delivering them.

I feel that by having that space in my calendar, more opportunities arose. This is the universe bit, the manifestation bit - when you create space, new and cool ideas and opportunities tend to emerge. I've found that whenever I've kept things a little more low-key, whether socially, work-wise, or in another domain, it creates that space.

Now, September is always one of my busiest months in the coaching world, and I think that's the case for a lot of people. September, October, and November are three very busy months before Christmas. I'm still being really mindful of that.

One thing I'm doing is drawing from the Lazy Genius, Kendra Adachi, who talked in a recent episode about scanning the horizon for anything that might give you a sense of dread. And I'll be honest - because September is so busy, with lots of programmes running, lots of in-person work, kids back at school, and completely unpredictable things hitting the calendar around their sport that you have to respond to quickly and can't say no to - I do have a slight sense of dread about the running around. So wherever I've had the opportunity to say no, whether socially to something that's only borderline for me anyway, or to work that isn't that plum stuff I'm really excited about, I've been clearer about it.

I've already started doing that, and I'm already feeling a little more relaxed about autumn.

Just as a side note - last autumn, between September and Christmas, I think I managed to get ill four times. I was doing the opposite last year. My word of the year was surrender, and I think I said yes to absolutely everything that came my way. This year I've learned that the kind of work I'm being asked to do, I don't see AI taking anytime soon. It's important work that organisations are very willing to invest in. So that slight diversion aside - the second idea for you is creating space.

As we enter this busy period, I want to replay that question - credit to Kendra Adachi for this - which is: is there anything giving you that sense of dread about the next few months that you can proactively take off the calendar?

I have a big trip coming up and I really want to be relaxed around it. I don't want to arrive already completely exhausted. So I do want my September, October, November to have more working from home where possible. That's the idea of creating space - both because it creates opportunity, and because heading into busy months, it can turn those into more joyful periods.

What do we want the rest of the year to look like?

So, okay - what do we do with all of this? What do we want the rest of the year to look like?

I've already said I want to take both of those things - the golden thread and creating space - forward with me. It's not that I want autumn to be slow. I know it won't be, but I've already been proactive about that.

What I do want for the next few months is that August feeling. August felt beautifully relaxed. But summer months aren't known for consistency - from a fitness and nutrition perspective, definitely not. I have been showing up at the gym wherever possible when I'm around, though I'm still no nearer the mythical pull-up I'm working towards. The thing that has fallen off in the summer is my weekly dance class, which I'm sad about because I love it. I was enjoying going with my daughter and thought we'd be going every week through summer - but you don't need many trips to disrupt it, plus a couple of other unexpected things, and before you know it you've fallen out of the habit again. So if there's one thing I'd like to have back before Christmas, it's that dance class. There are only good things about going to a weekly dance class.

So I'm looking forward to the consistency that September, October, and November hopefully will bring, whilst also keeping some of this organising and grounding time - recognising that it's genuinely therapeutic for me.

The way I created space for it, by the way, was simple. From the beginning of August I took Instagram off my phone, because I'd noticed it creeping up. I've brought it back a couple of times and noticed myself getting lost on my phone again, so that remains an easy way to make sure I still have space for organising and grounding.

I'm going to see if I can create some empty weeks by bunching up my work, so not every week looks exactly the same. I do think that's where the magic happens.

And as I said - I'm going to be saying no to more things. I feel in a more comfortable place to do that, both socially and from a work perspective. Let's see, but that's the approach and the mindset I'm taking into this next period.

What's coming up on the podcast

This is relevant to the future episodes we've got coming up, because what I've just described is basically what I took from the summer and what I'm refreshing as we approach autumn and the end of the year. It's not some huge overhaul. It's managing to stick to some things that have worked and adding back in a couple of things. Very much a refresh.

And what we're going to be talking about over the next few weeks is various things around that refresh before the end of the year - some of my favourite ways of thinking about this and helping us put them into practice. Hopefully you'll feel like we're going on a little bit of a journey together, starting quite big picture and narrowing it down over the next few weeks and months.

I'm really looking forward to sharing some of this content with you. It feels fresh. It feels like I've had the time to go away and think about it and map some of it out.

Please do make sure that however you're listening or watching this, you are following along and subscribed. And if there's someone you think could benefit from having that golden thread at the start of a month - maybe your partner and you could have that conversation together - please share this episode with them. Or if you think somebody could benefit from creating a bit more space in their life because they tend to schedule really tightly, maybe this would be helpful for them to hear.

I look forward to connecting with you next time.

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About Maya

Maya Gudka is an executive coach specialising in C-suite career progression and leadership development. She works with senior leaders in major organisations on strategic career planning, executive presence, and building sustainable influence. Maya hosts The Refreshing Leadership Podcast, which ranks in the top 2% of podcasts globally and has nearly 300 episodes exploring the challenges faced by ambitious professionals.