Reset

I needed to start over.

About 3 months ago, I got a sudden surge of energy to Fix My Life(tm). I tried to make too many efforts too quickly, burnt out, and went back to dealing with everything in bad ways. Now, I have a sudden surge of energy again -- let's give this one more shot.

No more digital minimalism

However I tried, I could not make digital minimalism work without majorly inconveniencing myself, which made me break the routines I had implemented. This time around, I will not be attempting digital minimalism, at least not yet. Trying to make the quintessential stuff stable first.

The quintessential stuff

Looking at the major scope, I need to fix things that directly impact my ability to live my daily life. So, here's what I've determined as priority zero:

• Sleep -- I must sleep better and with more discipline to make my time spent awake more impactful.
• Routine -- I need to implement routines (morning, evening, exercise) to provide a framework for my day-to-day life.

Sleep

Sleep is probably the most important thing I do. I've been on a grind to increase my sleep quality, which allows me to spend less time in bed, and spend more time energized. Pillow has helped a bunch in this. This is how my routine looks as of now:

• (I have f.lux enabled on all my devices, so the screen colors are shifted as necessary.)
• 9PM: Computer goes to sleep automatically. All overhead lighting is turned off automatically. All ambient lighting is turned to a semi-bright red color automatically. I stop working.
• I put my Apple Watch on its charger, and I go downstairs to take my magnesium glycinate.
  • I have found that magnesium glycinate reliably improves my sleep quality. YMMV.
• I take my evening shower, listening to my wind-down playlist.
• I go upstairs to fill my water bottle for the night, brush my teeth, and do skincare.
• I go to my bedroom, I open the windows to cool the room to 18 degrees celsius, and I start journaling.
  • I carry a paper journal with me everywhere. I like to do a brain dumping exercise at night.
  • Stop thinking about everything and close your eyes, like you would do when trying to fall asleep. Something will probably pop into your head (that would keep you from sleeping if you were already trying to fall asleep by now). Write it down. Could be factual, could be emotional. Just reflect, write out your inner dialogue, try to trace why it popped into your head, what you could do (if anything) to resolve this feeling, etc. Turn it into a todo list item if applicable. Repeat this process until you can't think of anything.
  • I have found that spending 30 minutes on brain dumping reliably reduced my time to fall asleep by 30 mintues.
• 11PM: I close the windows, start my sleep tracking, and go to sleep. I try to force myself to sleep on my back to prevent lower back pain from my usual sleeping position.

I currently do not use an alarm -- I reliably wake up around 9:00-9:30 AM without it. I will have to transform this evening routine to be school-compatible, so I will either have to improve my sleep quality to allow me to wake up earlier, or I will have to move my routine to an earlier time (or both).

I have also quit smoking in order to prevent the stimulant effect from preventing me from falling asleep, and to prevent cravings from waking me up in the middle of the night. (This is, still, extremely difficult.)

Using this routine, I've went from 30% sleep quality to hovering around 80%. I've reduced my time spent awake, and increased my time spent in deep sleep. I'm very happy with the results, but I'm still striving to get to an even higher percentage.

Routine

After implementing the evening routine to improve my sleep, I realized that I could also implement a morning routine to improve my productivity. I often fall into the trap of waking up and scrolling on my phone for hours, so doing something to get me out of bed and get me started with my day is immensely helpful. Here's how the first version of that looks like:

• Upon waking up: All lights automatically turn to a cold temperature, max brightness. Window curtains automatically open.
• I try to get out of bed as quickly as possible. I take a sip of water, and I open a window to reduce the amount of CO2 in my room.
• I go to the bathroom to brush my teeth, weigh myself, and put on sunscreen.
• I go downstairs to take my medicine, and I make myself a Plenny Shake for breakfast (or if I'm feeling nauseous, I just get some carbonated water).
• I go to the patio and sit outside for 15 minutes, reviewing my sleep stats, drinking my breakfast, checking my e-mails, and whatever else I want to do while I get some sunlight to wake me up.
• I go to my room and I get to work.

Now, this has been a moderate success. Everything is fine until the very last step, where things go unplanned again, and I have yet another chance to start scrolling on my phone. I've removed all social media from my phone, but I just do the same on my laptop. (I think I need to install LeechBlock NG on there also.)

Timeboxing

On Friday, I spent some time on timeboxing my whole day, since I had an overwhelming amount of tasks to accomplish. I wrote a list of tasks, put it in my calendar, and it worked pretty well! Timeboxing in a calendar is horrible, so I decided to test the Tiimo app, and it's amazing. I have found that if I go from the morning routine straight into my timeboxed setup, I don't have a chance to fall into doomscrolling.

Timeboxing is not a cure-all -- I still have a few tasks on my to-do list that I have such a mental block on that I just spent the time allocated idling. I'm not sure how to address that -- I either have to reflect on what I'm feeling to try to resolve the block, or I was also thinking about dedicating a whole day to the most difficult tasks, and trying to accomplish them in a less structured manner.

Exercise

I've found it very simple to set up an exercise routine with good sleep and my other routines backing it up. I've simply allocated time to run multiple times a week. It's been very easy to stick to for now, although I did implement a difficulty curve which hasn't kicked in full force yet. We'll see how that goes.

Emotions

I want to write a longer post about this at some point, but -- I've realized that I have not been listening to my emotions enough. And it's a damn shame, cause I've found that they're telling me some very important things. Reading Permission to Feel by Marc Brackett, Ph.D. has truly changed me as a person, and I've been able to plan and make decisions with so much more clarity by acknowledging how I feel. By planning not just around productivity and efficiency, but also around making myself happy, it's been a lot easier to actually stick to these plans.

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