Changing Your Daily Routine for the Better
Get ahead of the stressors in your day.
Written by Jake Levyns
Now that you have the ability to do so, it might not be a bad idea to look back on the routines you’ve built a few months ago as a jumping-off point for how you can perfect them in the new year, as your daily schedule and needs change with being more active. This really starts with what you do for yourself before you go to sleep at night and once you wake up in the morning to get yourself in check. Adjustments to the things you would normally do subconsciously can have long-term benefits and put you in a clearer headspace to seize the important opportunities in your life. Take these first steps to get yourself on a manageable track towards active productivity once again, no matter how clichéd they may sound on the surface.
Take your phone out of bed at night
What sounds easiest to carry through on is often the hardest to start doing. The simple act of putting your phone on Do Not Disturb before bed and leaving it on a shelf in your room is one of them. While the positive effects of doing so may take time to build, I can tell you that it surely releases a significant pocket of agitation that comes with using such technology throughout the daytime. Trust us even with baby steps, you’ll become is better off for releasing it.
Follow a simple skincare regimen
There is something to be said about what practicing a skincare routine, either by evening or morning, can do to put yourself in better physical and mental health. Be sure that you aren’t doing so because other people are too, though; you should want to learn better habits for yourself first.
Practice deep breathing and meditation
You don’t have to be a yogi to appreciate what guided meditations can do to brighten your spirits so you can tackle the day at your highest capacity. There’s an exercise I did once in an acting class that was spent doing so, that is, centering ourselves within our breathing to understand how our mood could be affected by it, and it worked better than anything I’d done similar to it on my own time. It may not seem like anything groundbreaking when you first go about it, but again, you can only reap positivity.
Buy a daily calendar or planner
There’s a simple pleasure in being able to Sharpie out a square on a calendar at the end of a long day, but it’s not necessarily for the reasons you’d suspect. The amount of times we’ve all collectively lost track the days in quarantine can only mean that we haven’t done enough to keep ourselves on top of things. Keeping a calendar or daily planner on your bedside is two birds with one stone, noting your priorities and when they really should be finished by. Don’t believe me? Give it a try.
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