A little regularity in a world of change
Everyday is different, very different. Maybe one day you are non-stop busy, but the next day you can hardly find anything to occupy your time. That's life, take everyday as it comes and every opportunity you can.
Despite these differences though, I always start and end my day with the same routine. In the morning it helps me to get motivated in the morning and in the evening my routine helps me to relax and rewind, no matter what kind of day I've had.
I always wake up around 9/9:30 (I'm lucky enough that 3/4 of my morning lectures start at 11, even the other morning lecture starts at 10 so I'm still lucky I don't have any 9ams!). Even on my day off or weekend I find myself waking up at this time, which I don't mind. It means I can get stuff done and make my day productive.
After waking up, the first thing I do is, yes, reach for my phone, but not for social media. I get some tunes playing, usually Spotify's 'Monday Motivation' playlist (or sometimes the charts or 'Every UK number one's) they're all upbeat songs which help motivate me to get up and get moving on cold days!
I use the app 7 minutes to do a workout, I really love this app because even the busiest of people can find time for this and the only things you need other than yourself is a chair and a wall, so it's pretty doable for anyone! Also, it uses HIT (high intensity training), meaning you do exercises that really get your heart rate going quickly with an exercise for 30s then you have a quick 15s break then do another exercise.
Usually I feel great and super motivated after my workout and I think it really gets me going for the day. I'll then have a shower and get dressed and maybe do something with my hair.
Then I have breakfast which recently has consisted of oranges and yogurt, but also a little bit of luxury for myself: hot chocolate! During breakfast I will use curiosity to read some short articles and if I have time I will also do a Spanish lesson on Duolingo. I like doing this before my uni lectures because it gets my brain working again and into a language mode (which is especially useful as most of my lectures are Mandarin)! I also check my emails, but still no social media!
So that's my morning, I then go off to lessons or studying or whatever else I have to do.
In the evening after dinner I usually don't do much as I want to unwind. My evening consists of getting into some comfy pyjamas cleaning my teeth and face and putting on my overnight moisturiser from Origins.
I get in bed and I'll play some relaxing, slow music, basically to help my brain relax and prepare myself for sleeping. If I didn't do a Duolingo lesson in the morning I'll do that first. Then I will read some more articles from curiosity or blogs. Reading is so good in general but also a really good thing to do before bed because it allows you to slow down and your brain to relax.
After reading for an hour or so I will usually go to sleep around 11pm. I use a website called sleepytime to calculate when I go to sleep because it's not just about how many hours, its also about sleep cycles, so I go to sleep according to these times it gives me but also make sure it's about 8 hours.
So that's my morning and evening routine, as I said they help me to get motivated in the morning and wind down at night! I don't actually check my social media until about 12 when we have a break in class and its so nice to not worry about anything.
