7 ways I’ve been looking after myself
Hi, I missed you.
Before I went away, I wrote about how to survive the job hunt and keep yourself from full-on Losing It during this exhausting time. Unsurprisingly, I, too, was struggling from stress, anxiety, burnout, and the immense weight of the past year. So, I took my own advice for once and took a step back.
But I have returned to you, feeling (relatively) rested and so, so excited to be here.
A quick housekeeping note before we jump into today’s content:
Posts will now fall under four general categories and will rotate around so there’s hopefully a bit of something for everyone:
General early career advice
Personal life insights
Journalism-specific thoughts
My Hot Takes
I’ve also added tags for you so you can navigate the categories that serve you best. As always, feel free to drop a line if there’s something you’d particularly like to see from me.
Since I’ve been away for a while, I’d love to share with you a few ways I’ve been building healthier, more sustainable habits into my day-to-day routine.
Break up the day
I’ve tried time auditing, I’ve tried the pomodoro method, and I even tried setting a schedule for myself to follow, but most recently, I’ve been simply breaking up the day into fairly obvious time periods.
Before work begins, I do my morning routine (more on that below) to set myself up for the day. Even if the rest of the day ends up being a bit of a wash, I still feel like I’ve accomplished something.
During the first half of my work day, I square away daily tasks and maintenance before diving into individual projects. I also take regular breaks; “study with me” videos like this one on YouTube have been really helpful for this:
When I’ve completed the main portion of my work and my inbox is empty, I devote the afternoon to working on personal projects or life admin, like phone calls or running to the post office.
It is so important to me that my professional and personal life are separate (as difficult as working from home tends to make that), so I have a strict 6 p.m. cut-off time.
The evenings are for whatever I feel I need: taking a walk, doing some cleaning, or just laying in bed watching obscure cooking competitions on Netflix. This way, I’m not scrambling around by the time I’m getting ready for sleep.
Exercise!
I never thought I’d be the kind of person who enjoys exercise, let alone working out first thing in the morning. But, by some strange glitch in the matrix, I am now That Person. I go to the gym before work, and this past week I’ve been trying out The Rock’s workout.*
*an extremely modified, normal-person version. I also definitely do not eat like this.
Exercise helps with my mental clarity, sleep quality, appetite, and confidence. And, having been in lockdown for the better part of a year in an extremely tiny apartment, it’s rewarding to have the opportunity to move my body again.
Make categorized lists
Enormous to-do lists tend to overwhelm me so much that I end up just staring at all the little bullet points, and, three hours later, find that somehow none of the tasks have been completed at all.
Instead, I break up tasks by category. Just because I can’t get everything done, doesn’t mean I can’t make progress. I use notecards to organize my categories, and they end up looking something like this:
(Vague) meal planning
I have a bad habit of buying takeout, even when there’s still plenty of food in my house. Most of the time, it comes down to two factors: I am tired and don’t want to cook, or I forget what I have already. (Sometimes it’s both.)
Now that I’m an adult, I have to “we-have-food-at-home”-myself, and I’ve been trying to plan out my meals day by day, based on the ingredients I have on hand. I’m not a big fan of batch cooking the same meal five days in a row, but there are a few easy and quick go-to recipes I make several times during the week, plus a few that are quite simple to scale up. Forcing myself to use everything I have has not only helped me to save money, but also to get creative and keeps me from getting bored.
Here’s a sample of what a day looks like (minus snacks):
A few things I’ve learned along the way:
Soups and stews are a great way to use up vegetables in the freezer, or the ones in the fridge that aren’t quite up to standard for a hummus platter anymore (i.e. a little limp and sad)
Stir fries can handle pretty much any combination of vegetables, protein, and noodles or rice
Pasta (my favorite) can also handle a ton of vegetables
Eggs are an easy and extremely quick source of protein
A handful of spinach (fresh or frozen) can be tossed in everything from smoothies to pasta to instant ramen
Potatoes are inexpensive, filling, and can easily be repurposed into the aforementioned soups and stews, served with fried eggs, or baked into a frittata
Keeping a list of snack ideas (like popcorn, peanut butter on toast, yogurt, smoothies, etc.) prevents me from running to the corner store on a whim
Go for walks
I’ve built a few regular walks into my day to keep myself relatively active, and to make sure my hips and spine don’t get too tight from sitting. (I’m 25, so apparently I have to worry about that kind of thing now.)
Sun is also in short supply during the winter months here, so I am grateful for any chance I get to stick my face into the light and take pictures of the city in bloom.
I walk in the morning if I’m not going to the gym, during my lunch break or in late afternoon, and sometimes before dinner. I’m not pushing for 10,000 daily steps, but I do use Pokemon Go’s egg hatching mechanic for rough distance estimates. I try to hatch two 2 km eggs — about 1.25 miles each — per day (or about the equivalent of two Dunkin runs, if you want to get technical about it).
If there’s a bit of extra time to have a sit, I also take a book with me. I just finished Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, and am now getting started on Wuthering Heights.
Practice mindfulness
As someone who has an extremely cluttered brain at all times, I try to prioritize keeping all the junk in order up there.
In the morning, I do a 10-minute meditation practice. At night, I listen to a sleep meditation to make sure I’m actually trying to sleep rather than staring at my phone screen.
Here’s a couple of my favorites:
Habit tracking has been a great way to build in healthier habits, like eating enough fruits and vegetables, staying hydrated, and practicing my target language. (La langue j’apprends est français, qui j’ai appris un peu à l'école, mais je veux vraiment bien apprendre maintenant!) It keeps them top-of-mind so I won’t just put them off until later (for me, later usually means never). I use the Habit app, which looks like this on a good day:
I also use Plant Nanny, an adorable app where you grow a variety of plants along with how much water you drink. While there are a few tweaks I’d make to optimize the app, it’s been such a cute and motivating way to stay hydrated.
Get set up ahead of time
This last one is small, but makes an enormous difference. Before I go to bed, I take 15 minutes to make sure all my miscellaneous items are put away, the dishes are done, and my gym clothes are laid out. I also write out my priorities for the next day with my categorized lists, and plan what I’d like to eat for my meals. Each of these steps only take a few minutes, but it eliminates having to think about them, and I can go to sleep with a relatively clear mind.
Bonus playlist:
Songs for warmer days, blue skies, and cherry blossoms.
(More of) What I’ve been up to:
Whether overt or covert, the message is unmistakable — iPondr
How does your garden grow? — Harvard Gazette
Open access — Harvard Gazette