Summer is a time notorious for getting kids to forget everything they learned over the course of the last school year. Many people promise themselves that they will be productive and go to the gym or limit their electronic screen time, but in the end, you become a potato. Don’t even lie, potatification is a fact of the summer.

So to not feel dreadfully awful after letting a summer waste away with you lounging around your house doing nothing, here are some ways to have a more fulfilling summer.

Step one: Don’t set goals!

Okay, this may sound sketchy and, like, goals are what push us to do better right? Reach for the moon and you land among the stars… right? NO, WRONG!

You reach for the moon and you land on your bed, cover yourselves with a blanket and dare not stare at the sky again. The only bright thing you look at is your cell phone screen and a tub of vanilla ice cream.

What you should do is try things as you usually do them. Take it easy and let motivation come to you when you feel like it. It’s not like summer is the time to push yourself to the brink of destruction. No, do what you want to do, relax, and make sure to never go overboard one way or the other.

Step two: Have fun

It’s summer, time to work your ass of to earn enough money for the rest of the year, shutting out the rest of your social life for a few months to be able to enjoy yourself when bogged down with school work for the rest of the year, right? WRONG AGAIN! That is a one-way ticket to crash and burn with a gallon of miseryville.

Your summer is supposed to be the time to take your mind off of the never ending slog of schoolwork you have to deal with throughout the rest of the year. It’s called a VACATION, you dummy! It’s a time to be with friends, family and other people you’ve shunned while having to study.

Though don’t take this the wrong way, having fun and being a potato are two completely different things. Make sure to socialize, whether it’s through a video game or board game or DnD or going to the mall or the beach or the waterpark or just a park. It’s a time to rekindle old bonds before you abandon them by going off to your dream university in the fall and forgetting to make contact with them, making them think you’re dead or something.

Step three: Do what you want to do

“So now you’re saying that you can lay on your bed all day watching garbage and that’s okay, right? Because that’s sure what it sounds like,” calling myself a hypocrite in the third person.

WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Tell me something, do you think watching those videos is really making you happy? Making you feel like you have contributed to your own joy in a satisfactory manner that makes the hours of nonstop drool from your computer’s internet browser worth your time? I didn’t think so.

At the start of the summer, you have goals for yourself, but by listening to my first step, you have abandoned those goals. Instead, I ask you to keep those things you wanted to accomplish in your head and let those things push you to find the motivation to do them.

Abandoned goal one: limit screen time. Let the onsetting guilt of not doing anything give you the motivation to stop watching videos.

Abandoned goal two: Get a job and work excessively over the summer. Set a limit on which days you are working and let the responsibility of having to go to work take care of the rest.

Abandoned goal three: write a book, read a book, do art, practice your instrument, whatever. Let the motivation find you to do these things. You won’t accomplish anything if you push yourself to do something when you’re not in the mood.

So do what makes you truly happy, and you will not become a potato.

Or you will follow my advice, become a potato anyway and then blame me for giving you false hope. Either way, it’s your fault, not mine.

-Ilona Kinnear