Over the past few months, many of us have settled into a familiar routine: wake up in a rush, chug some coffee, sit down in a heap at your computer, stare at your screen(s) until it’s dark, whip up a simple-but-repetitive dinner, and unwind with a few hours of Netflix. If you’re lucky, you may squeeze a quick workout in there at some point.
This just sounds exhausting, right?
Even though we may not like to admit it, we’re running on the work-gym-sleep hamster wheel more often than we think. Over 85% of adults admit to looking at their emails and notifications within five minutes of waking up. And, nearly sixty percent of us say that we’re feeling creatively unfulfilled - which leads to higher rates of burnout, stress, and anxiety.
So, fixing the robotic nature of our daily routine not only feels better, but it’s essential for our health and longevity.
But what can we actually do about it? How do we get off this work-gym-sleep hamster wheel, especially during a pandemic when we’re confined to our homes? While it’s essential to get to the root of these habits, which I do in my new book, there are a few small mindset shifts that you can start to implement to feel better right now.
1. Your Morning Dictates Your Say - So Practice Slowing Down
As we’ve already learned, over eighty-five percent of adults begin their day by activating their nervous system and jumpstarting their fight-or-flight mode. Essentially, when we allow ourselves to be inundated by notifications, emails, and scrolling through social media from the moment we wake up, we start our day in a stressed out, comparative way.
So, what if you tried practicing slowing down? Developing a calming morning routine has an immense impact on productivity, mental health, and perspective throughout the day. This practice varies for everyone - and most importantly, it doesn’t need to be long or overwhelming.
I recommend a few important rituals in my book, On Adulting, that are accessible for all of us and backed by science to improve our health and happiness. My favorite aspects of a morning routine include some of the following practices: sitting in silence for a few moments or practicing a guided meditation, developing a ritual sans technology around your morning drink of choice - whether that’s making a french press coffee or sipping on water, and giving yourself the gift of fresh air and sunshine, no matter what the weather.
Regardless of how you decide to set up your morning before diving into work, be sure to approach it with a flexible mindset. Often, we think that building a new habit is all or nothing - like, if we skip a day or miss our alarm, we can never go back to this practice.
But, the power of a calming morning routine is in the mindset that you begin to develop.
2. Batch Your Tasks For Optimal Productivity
One of the most challenging aspects of working in this new environment is the switching costs that your brain experiences when you go from being on a Zoom call to answering your partner’s questions about what to have for lunch. In all seriousness, our brains are not meant to multitask at the level we currently are - and we can be much more productive if we apply the following simple approach to our workday.
The concept of “batching” tasks is often used in engineering to reduce a load of a machine’s computing power by putting “like” tasks with “like” tasks. We’re going to apply that practice to how we approach our work. So, you might try re-scheduling your calendar something like this:
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Now, this concept might depend on the working style and situation of your organization, whether you’re an executive or a small-business owner. But, approaching your schedule with this mindset is impactful for you, your teams, and your mental well-being.
3. Schedule Joy Into Your Calendar
Did you know that if you schedule joy into your calendar, you experience 30% more happiness than if you just experienced a joyful event spontaneously?
This fact is especially helpful for my Type-A planners, like me. I always imagined that scheduling “fun” into my calendar is almost the opposite of fun, but research tells us that it’s not true.
When we’re running on the work-gym-sleep hamster wheel, the idea of having fun or experiencing joy is far from our minds. We feel robotic and almost obsessed with our never-ending To-Do lists. But, as I talk about a lot in On Adulting, actively and consistently looking for moments of joy in our day can rewire our brain’s neurons to approach life in a more enjoyable way.
So, try experimenting with a joy-seeking attitude. You might treat yourself to a coffee during certain afternoons each week, and practice being really present and aware on your walk over to your local coffee shop. Or you might schedule a play session with your puppy instead of catching up on those last set of emails. Whatever joy looks like for you - remember that the more you train yourself to experience it, the more of it you’ll notice in your life.
4. Inject Creativity Into Your Evening Routine
Creativity is scientifically proven to reduce stress, anxiety, and burnout - many feelings that we experience when we’re running on the hamster wheel with no end in sight. But, many of us have been told we’re not “good” at creativity from a young age. Mind you, the United States is facing a “creative gap” right now, where most adults say creativity is important, but few feel creatively fulfilled.
I am also the co-founder of a mental well-being startup called Daydreamers, which works to solve this exact issue - and the most important thing that experts recommend is just getting started. So, slot in some time after dinner to watercolor, like you did as a kid, or set a journal near your nightstand to write before going to sleep. Essentially, the output of your creativity doesn’t matter - if you utilize your creative expression as a chance to shift your mood instead, you can begin to turn it into a stress-reducing (and fun!) habit.
5. Test Out Some Inspiration Dates
One of my favorite concepts of all time is the idea of an Inspiration Date. This term was coined by author and artist Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way. She recommends that every human sets aside one day of the week to take themselves on an adventure - whether that’s going to a bookstore and browsing without a purpose or exploring a new neighborhood with a fresh set of eyes.
Often, especially in the world we are living in, our weekends look exactly the same as our hamster-wheel from Monday through Friday. So, to inject some of that creative excitement back into your life, try taking yourself on an Inspiration Date at least once a week. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy - but viewing it as a time to get out of your comfort zone and see the world anew.
At the end of the day, getting stuck on the work-gym-sleep hamster wheel feels so draining because we feel robotic in our actions. So, once again, if we were all able to experiment with a little joy, inspiration, and creativity - we might treat each other, and most importantly ourselves, a tiny bit better.
WRITTEN BY
Katina Mountanos