Building Daily Habits and Routines
Old habits die hard. Humans are creatures of habit. We do things regularly, whether they are good or bad. Building a habit is like walking up a flight of stairs; make the small steps to progress. If we want to get more out of our lives, we have to develop good habits. Let’s look at some strategies of building strong routines and habits.
Focus on having a strong start and end to the day
Firstly, start and end your day by waking up and going to bed at the same time everyday, give or take 30 minutes. This helps maintain your circadian rhythm i.e. your internal body clock. This is obviously very difficult for myself and for others who work in shifts but as much as possible try to keep a semi-regular sleep schedule.
The Morning Routine
How you wake up can determine how you will go about the rest of your day. Thus, you want to set yourself up for success. You can start with an expression of gratitude and then by making an affirmation like, “I can overcome anything that comes my way today.“. I like to start by saying “Thank you God for me being alive, well and free.“ The basic things. It takes less than 10 seconds and doesn’t take much effort.
After this, take five minutes to plan your day. I think it’s good to use a calendar or some sort of day planner and get your thoughts down somewhere. I would suggest starting by writing down five tasks that you plan on doing today. Then, narrow the list down to three things; just three. After this, identify which of these three things is your number one priority i.e. if you get this task done than you consider the day “a win”, and the others are high priority tasks. Some days, you will have more on your plate and other times you’ll have less. Doing this exercise gives you the focus and clarity you need for the rest of your day.
Avoid checking social media and the news in the morning. A lot of times, news and social media will talk about negative aspects such as death, war, natural disasters, the COVID pandemic. That’s not to say you should never check the news or go on Facebook, but you don’t want to start your day turning on CNN seeing “COVID PANDEMIC“ flashing behind a red background. Check the news and social media later in the day, preferably in the late afternoon.
Now that you are awake, you should do whatever needs to be done before you leave for work/school, in the same order everyday. In my case, I set the urn to boil, take a shower while waiting, have breakfast, brush my teeth, get dressed and then head off to work. You do this everyday so that it becomes muscle memory and you can functional on “autopilot” and think about other more important things.
Throughout the day
A big tip is to look for opportunities to use “wasted time“. Situations where a lot of time is wasted are:
waiting in line at the bank;
waiting at the canteen or restaurant for your order to arrive;
waiting for lecturer to set up their presentation.
All these involve some degree of waiting. Use these times to complete one of your tasks or do something productive. For example, last week Tuesday morning, I went to the bank to pick up my new bank card since the previous one expired. I stood in line for about 45 minutes. Whilst in line, using my phone, I:
Completed my daily Anki revision deck on formal Swahili
Completed three Duolingo language lessons
Sent necessary emails and downloaded the appropriate documents to begin processing my visa renewal
Completed a module for an online triage course
Came up with the idea of this blog post and then wrote it down
Played a little bit of Brick Breaker if I have to be completely honest.
I could have instead spent the whole time playing Brick Breaker/on social media on my phone, complaining about how slow the line is to my friends and then later complain about how I didn’t have enough time to do things. Instead, I chose to be more proactive with my time. In essence, take advantage of waiting times to get more done.
The Evening Routine
The evening should be a time of relaxation, reflection and brief planning for the next day. You can also use it as a chance to finish off outstanding tasks. Now would be a good time to go on social media and check the news. If you managed to get your number one priority done and maybe your other tasks done, that’s great! If not, see what happened during the day. Maybe you were too busy with other things? Maybe you planned too many things to do today? Maybe an emergency came up? Remember to forgive yourself and not to be too hard on yourself. Identify what went wrong and come up with ways to address them in the future.
Here are some tips to help you have a good evening routine:
Try to have dinner before 9pm so that you don’t have a full stomach right before bed.
Prepare your clothes, food and other items for the next day to reduce stress in the morning.
Do some journaling and self-reflection to help prepare you for bed. List three things that you enjoyed today, three things you learnt and you three things you are grateful for. Write out your worries or fears to offload your mind of burdens and enjoy better quality sleep.
Reduce your blue light intake at night from electronic devices. Excessive blue light exposure at night inhibits secretion of melatonin from pineal gland, the chemical responsible for helping maintain our circadian rhythm. Hence, improve your quality of sleep by using a blue light filter that comes with most smartphones or by downloading by a free blue light filter app such as Iris, which is what I use on my laptop. I automatically set my blue light filter to turn on at 7pm and turn off at 7am everyday and it takes less than ten seconds to set. Look for “blue light filter” or “eye comfort shield“ in your phone settings.
Develop your own bedtime ritual to help ease you into falling asleep. Common rituals are drinking warm milk or tea, reading a book, listening to music. As part of my bedtime ritual, I do five minutes of journaling and then make it a point to brush my teeth with my non-dominant hand (my left hand) for two minutes before going to bed. Three reasons I do this are:
Improved oral hygiene
Training my left hand to be more dextrous
This action tells my body, “get ready to shut down and go to bed“ (after typing this I just realized that I sound like a computer).
By dedicating two minutes to brushing my teeth, I’m accomplishing several mini-goals and this helps enforce the habit.
Additional advice
On that note, develop your own good daily habits that will help you in the future or for fun. Since I’m in a particularly good mood, here’s some of the habits I do:
Last year around July, I decided I want to be more ambidextrous for fun (I am naturally right-handed). So I started doing everything with my left hand to train it every single day: eating, combing my hair, brushing my teeth etc. Now, after more than a year, I’m not completely ambidextrous but I’m much more comfortable using my left hand for regular daily activities. I instinctively use my left hand when I’m eating in public or pick up my tooth brush with my left hand to brush. The habit has been formed and is now muscle memory;
Doing at least two Duolingo lessons a day in either French or formal Swahili, which takes about 5-10 minutes;
Journaling at the end of every day or other day;
Drinking two litres of water on my days off;
Weekly thinking and planning sessions;
Daily Bible readings when I wake up.
I do all of the above because they are important to me and they all have the bonus that they are all free, reducing the barrier of me not completing the tasks. Work out what things are important to you, make small steps to achieve them every day, stick to them and you will feel happier.
Kuwa salama na kukuona karibuni hivi! (be safe and see you soon!)
