Happy Valentine's Day to you. Whatever your love life situation is, there is and should always be room for some good old self love. And since by now we know how self love isn't always tubs of icecreams and bubble baths, here are 8 helpful ways to show some love to yourself.
Presenting to you 8 ways to help your future self.
If you're a more visual person, I encourage you to watch my video on this topic. Subscribe to my Youtube channel while you're at it, that would be lovely!
1. Assign a specific compartment in your everyday carry bag to put your essentials like keys, IDs, etc:
I have personally experienced this so many times and have also seen this happen to my friends as well. You reach a place, you're excited to go in, you quickly get off your two-wheeler, put the key in your bag somewhere while chatting to your friends who're with you, go in, have a gala time and return to your vehicle. WAIT. Where's the key?
Ofcourse your bag has 2-3 compartments and is overflowing with stuff. You're already running late. You put your keys SOMEWHERE right? But where exactly?!
Enter panic.
To avoid this scenario the simple solution is to assign a compartment in each of your bags where things like you keys, your wallet and our beloved new additions - hand sanitiser and an extra mask will go.
This saves the trouble of frantically searching through your whole bag and lets you avoid unnecessary moments of panic.
2. Put a reminder on your phone every time you pay a recurring bill for the next due date.
This has been a game-changer for me. Ofcourse there are some bills like rent, monthly subscriptions and what not, that fall on the same date every month. However there are a few which don't. I have picked up the habit of scheduling the next due date in my calendar on the same day I pay my earlier bill.
For recurring, same-due-date bills you can set a recurring monthly reminder in your calendar. I do this for my subscriptions.
For bills with irregular intervals, I take 2 mins to calculate the next due date right after I pay my bill/ recharge and put a reminder right there and then.
This frees up space in your brain and you don't have to give these trivial tasks a second thought. Automate, my friend.
3. Don't leave the laundry, dishes, cleaning for tomorrow - Do it right away!
Now to be very frank, I've included this because I personally still struggle with this. But this is what experience has shown me. Do your chores right away - it requires less time and motivation.
Countless times, I've let me dishes pile up in the sink, let my laundry basket overflow with unwashed clothes, only to regret it later when I've nothing to wear and nothing to eat in.
I hopefully will get into the habit of being regular and timely with my chores and I hope you do as well. We need to practise adulting now, seriously.
4. Write everything down! - reminders, ideas, anything you feel is worth remembering!
How can I not include this if I've taken up bullet journalling? Ofcourse I had to.
Ryder Carrol - the inventor of the bullet journal method - himself is an advocate of this tip so really, do I need to even justify?
Your brain is going to conveniently forget the most important things right when you need to remember them, so do yourself a favour and start getting into the habit of writing everything down. You'll be so thankful later on.
5. Have a daily routine to fall back on written down
According to me, there are 4 types of days:
i. Good mental energy + motivation to work = happy, easy going productive day
ii. Not so good mental energy + can't really take the day off because there's a lot to be done
iii. Not so good mental energy + can actually take a break, its fine, we have time later.
iv. Good mental energy + break day = happy, easy going chill day
Now this tip is for type ii. where you're not feeling it, but you need to get work done. For such days, what you can do is have a routine/ instruction guide written down somewhere that you can rely on and just blindly follow without thinking about it.
After having gone through your day in such a manner, you'll feel much better about the day in retrospect. Try it and let me know how it works for you.
6. Keep collections of different things you might need - TBR, to watch, places to eat, etc
These collections come in so handy for times when you're searching for content or places to go to. Because like I said earlier, your brain is going to pull a blank slate on you when you need to think of something specific. So have this list handy. Add to it as you go.
Here are a few recommendations for lists you can make:
7. Prepare today for tomorrow:
Now this can be done in so many ways. A few ideas are to:
i. Meal prep/ keep ingredients ready for tomorrow's food.
ii. Pick out your outfit for tomorrow.
iii. Keep your workout clothes/ gear ready to go for tomorrow.
iv. Plan your day for tomorrow if that works for you.
And so many more things. The idea here is to take a few minutes off your day today to get a heads up on the following day so that you can start it off with less friction.
8. Clean your workspace every night before you go to bed:
Now you might ask me, Aparna, why didn't you include this in the earlier tip since it falls under the same category?
And to that I'll answer that this tip gets separate attention due to the times that we live in. Since a lot of us are working from home right now, our workspaces at home have become more important than ever. Most of us have a dedicated working area that's in the vicinity of our bedroom/ living space and hence it becomes important for us maintain the 'working' vibe fo this workspace.
If you come to a messy desk in the morning and clutter is all you see, half your motivation is going to go out the window and the other half is going to dwindle far faster than you'd imagine. Hence to avoid all this, clearing up our deskspace the night before is the least we can do to get a headstart on tomorrow.
Tucking away your notebooks, clearing away your gadgets, putting away all your stationery, cleaning your work surface are the small things we can do to ensure that we come to a good, clean, fresh workspace every day.
Its all about tipping the scales in our favour.
I hope that you found some of these ways to be helpful. Ofcourse I don't claim this list to be exhaustive - infact it's just a beginning. Might turn this into a series if my brain can come up with more tips!
Help my blog grow by sharing it with your friends and family. I'll see you next week. Take care!