People are out of office. My nervous system is not.
August 23, 2026 · Gev Marotz · 4 min read
Every summer, work slows down. Every summer, I start wondering if it's finally the year the well runs dry.
This year, a few contracts I'd had for a year or two all ended around the same time. A couple of new ones were starting. On paper, it was fine.
Still, when a contract ends in the summer, it feels weird.
Earlier in my career, the end of a contract would send me straight into panic mode. Now it usually doesn't bother me much. Contracts end. New ones start. That is, apparently, the business I chose.
But when it happens while everyone's away, Slack is quiet, and every decision takes three extra weeks, the same ending can feel bigger than it is.
So instead of white-knuckling through August like usual, I did the math.
The gap was smaller than the story in my head.
There were contracts ending. There were a couple starting. There were conversations that would probably move when people got back from vacation. Nothing was certain, but nothing was broken either.
In August, a calendar problem can feel a lot like a warning sign.
Nobody's ghosting you. They're at the lake.
The real number
When things go quiet, my brain rarely says, "Several normal things are happening at once."
It's more like: "This feels quiet. I've missed something. It's probably my fault."
So I made myself do three unglamorous things.
First, I worked out the number. Not the number that would make me feel invincible, but the projects or revenue I need for the next 90 days.
In my head, it becomes: I need four new clients right away.
When I do the math, it's often two.
Two deals means momentum. It keeps the team at my fractional studio busy. More importantly, it means I'm responding to the situation, not the much larger version of it my brain built on a Tuesday in August.
Then I wrote down people who'd already seen me work: former clients, collaborators, referrals, and near-misses.
Then I sent five notes. No sequence. No "circling back." Just a real check-in.
I still don't know exactly what September will look like. At least I know what I'm trying to solve.
If August feels too quiet, do this
Work out the real number (clients or revenue) for the next 90 days.
Make a warm list of people who already know your work.
Send five real check-ins.
Ask current clients: "What's coming up this fall that you're worried about but haven't scoped yet?"
Put one real thing out into the world: a case study, a process note, an opinion, or something still in progress.
Choose one non-client project you genuinely want to make.
Take one afternoon off without taking Slack to the dock.
Make something you care about
I didn't want to spend August pretending that reorganizing my calendar was strategy. I wanted to make something.
I'm rebuilding my website in real code because I have a year's worth of case studies I haven't posted yet. The screens work. The interactions work. The Juggle case study has a small puzzle game hidden inside it.
Maybe nobody will find it. I still want it there.
It's more effort than necessary. It's also how I want the work to be seen.
The other thing I did was write a funny LinkedIn post about the books I read this summer. It had nothing to do with design, consulting, clients, or any of the other words I've learned to use when I'm trying to sound like a person who has a plan.
Not because August handed me free time to fill, but because the messy part of fractional work has been obvious to me for years: too many client threads, too many loose promises at the end of calls, and too much Sunday-night admin that was supposed to happen Friday.
I'm making it because I am tired of losing a promise someone made in the last two minutes of a client call.
It's just August
August doesn't need to become an aggressive sales campaign.
Send the check-in. Publish the thing. Do enough to create momentum and keep the team busy.
Then make room for the project that's been nagging at you for longer than this summer.
The work isn't drying up.
It's just August.
Thanks for reading, Gev
I run Gev Design. We help teams figure out the product, brand, and website work that has been sitting in the "we should probably deal with this" pile for too long.
