1.Your Morning Habits
Getting up with the least amount out time possible to get ready and the most amount of time to snooze and check the clock for a multiple of 5 to get out of bed on. Followed by a rushed routine of half assed preparation and quick easy breakfast. The commute is timed so you arrive at the last second before your due start time. The day then begins, the emails, messages and to do lists. After your obligatory 10 hours you leave and commence the inverse commute home to, exhausted and ready for your evening meal.
When is the first thing you do that hasn’t been dictated by your work schedule? Your work has decided when you greet the day, when you eat and how you live. These are decisions that effect your life. You can improve your day when you take control of them. Your work must be done but it must be done on your terms.
Mornings are probably the most underutilized time of your day; the snooze is in control with an almost dread of getting up because it is leading to up to 14 hours straight of someone else controlling your time and decisions. No wonder you don’t want to get up. As soon as your foot hits the floor your working for someone else unless you take charge. Take an extra 30 minutes up to 3 hours in the morning for you, to do the things you love or the things you want to love. Make your morning habits enjoyable so you look forward to getting out of bed.
2.Your Phone Habits
Now it is always on, always by your side ready for action. If you are like me, it is difficult to resist the temptation to unlock and explore the same 5 apps I always explore. The order of opening the apps is almost always the same too, it shows it has become an automatic habit rather than a choice.
I open apps not knowing what I am about to encounter, it will be someone’s recent pictures on Instagram, maybe some hate on twitter and a clickbait headline on Facebook. The routine is performed like clockwork whenever there is a break in my day, or sometimes not even. The reach for the phone in the middle of something for no reason is constantly creeping into my day. During a conversation I feel my hand drift towards it, open it and click on the routinely first app. It’s almost uncontrollable.
Wrestle back control of your hand. Slap it as it goes towards the phone, bad hand. I don’t know how much of a negative it is to keep going to your phone, but I feel for me it interrupts what could be solid thinking time. Thinking is important, the space you have to breath between jobs, conversations and interactions is the space your brain can process and formulate what has happened and what will happen. This space for your brain to breath has been replaced by a now involuntary reach for the black screen.
Change this habit if you feel the same as me, you are in control of your phone, not the other way. Give yourself time to think.
3.Your Movement Habits
Stiff and sore, the seat is comfortable but not that comfortable, hunched over and reading your 129th email of the day. Arms tired, eyes sleepy and back in agony from the car seat as you travel another 129 miles to your next drop off. The 129th customer of the day walks in, your face is in permanent fake smile because you are covering for your sore feet and tired legs.
The control you have on what your body does is constant, but what you do is normally conform to the acceptable bodily behaviour of a situation, just like everyone else. It is unacceptable to jog on the spot in a queue, unacceptable to yoga stretch at your desk, unacceptable to stop and get out of the car to do squats. Why is this not acceptable? It would be so much better for our body to break up our day with exercises and stretches where we are. Often, we worry about being labelled weird, but you know who cares really. Your body will thank you, remember at the end of the day maybe being different is the thing that separates you from the proverbial sheep.
Get up and stretch, turn off your computer and walk, move when you feel like it and it is the recipe for a happier body.
4.Your Nighttime Habits
On self-reflection I am guilty of a pretty unstructured and phone dominated last 30 minutes of my day. The phone scroll looking for nothing in particular or Netflix takes me towards slumber. What could make this half an hour better? Ok its time to implement some new goals and routines. Why? Because I can and I have noticed that it is not particularly serving me to scroll through Instagram on repeat.
Not that every second of your day needs to be productive, I just feel I enjoy the time more if I have a nice relaxing wind down that maybe includes, reading, writing, reflection, meditation and relaxing. There are of course studies linking lack of sleep to overuse of screens and blue light, also there is a positive correlation between bedtime routine and sleep.
The time might be now to reflect and see what you can do differently in the half hour before bed. It could be possible to make a few changes that might help you sleep better while also allowing you to look out for your well-being.
FIGHT LAZINESS 