Monday marked the first day for our “path to self-improvement” challenge, but before I go straight into our “findings” as promised, I want to first explain, how we decided to gage things.
It was clear to us that we needed some way of judging this whole thing, so we have decided to, besides just writing down our experiences, also create some parameters that would help us determine what exactly has changed/will change over the course of the challenge and we came up with the following:
- Mood
- Productivity
- Sleepiness-Level (Energy Level was too mainstream xD) and
- Motivation (that includes motivation for non-work/uni things as well as the stuff that we have to do)
Alright, now that you know the ins and outs, let’s jump straight into our experiences, shall we?
Thoughts on getting up early
Surprisingly, getting up at 8am for the first time in forever was not as bad as we both thought it would be. Joan even said that she felt surprisingly awake and excited in the morning but also mentioned that that might be due to her excitement about getting started with the challenge, which I shared. However, I think my brain was like “what the actual f is going on” because I was awake at 2am at night, after having gone to bed on time mind you, and couldn’t fall asleep for like an hour or so. Thanks brain… 😑
Morning Routines
Unlike me, Joan actually already had a morning routine (kudos to you girl, I thought I could never), which consisted of making her bed, doing her skincare routine and brushing her teeth, followed by “a nice steaming cup of coffee and some music to lighten my mood and make me feel less dead.” Her new morning routine isn’t drastically different but rather just improved. She added a 10-min yoga session and a 5-minute guided meditation with positive affirmations to the things that she was already doing.
As already mentioned, my morning routine was practically non-existent. Besides making my bed and brushing my teeth, my mornings always looked different from day to day. Sometimes I would have breakfast immediately, sometimes I would read for hours in bed or just be on my phone for ages and sometimes I would get up and have breakfast while watching a YouTube video. Basically pure chaos, zero structure (that sounds like a very bad ad for something). So, I definitely wanted to change that and start my day with some structure. Didn’t manage to do so on the first day tho, so more on that in the Day 2 Post.
Mood
Our mood was practically identical. We both were super excited to get started with the challenge and nothing really bad happened to us during the day either which led to both of us being in a pretty good mood for the entire day.
Productivity
Joan: “As it was the first day of a new uni semester today, I had a lecture to attend to and make some decisions of an organizational nature and plan some stuff out. I did more than usual on that day with the morning yoga and getting a healthy breakfast and all that. I noticed that I had a lot more time and I used that to learn some songs on my guitar like “Toss a coin to your witcher” (if anyone wants to start a band – let me know ;D).”
Me: Seeing as I work from home, I sometimes have pretty jam-packed days, but for the first time in probably since I started working for this company, I was actually done with all my stuff by roughly 2pm and I suddenly had a all this time at my disposal that I barely knew what to do with.
Sleepiness-Level
Joan: “My energy level was pretty high, also heightened by doing the yoga and the meditation in the morning with a noticeable down at around 10-11am. This down lasted for about 2 hours and I had to “fight” the urge to take a nap or something. I managed to do so and had a nearly constant energy level only interrupted by a slight headache at around 11pm in the evening.”
Me: I felt completely fine during the day and I was definitely more energetic than usual and it wasn’t until I had come back from a brief trip to the shopping center that I experienced an energy crash, but when I did, I kinda crashed hard. You know the meme of the little girl who just lays down on the beach and goes ” I wanna take a nap” – yeah, that’s what I felt like. I did resist the urge tho, by basically just eating a lot of cookies to keep my blood sugar up and distracting myself with some personal projects because I knew that if I took a nap right then and there, I would not have been able to fall asleep when I needed to at night.
Motivation
Joan: “I felt some motivation to get things started but not as much as I had hoped for. I cleaned the flat and felt excited to start the yoga routine and meditation, but I’m not sure yet, if that is not just my brain going ‘uhhh new stuff… shiny’. Jury is still out on that one.”
Me: My motivation was quite high during the entirety of the day and suprise, suprise there was barely any procrastination happening (say whaaat?). I got some work on some personal projects done and, as you might have noticed, for the first time in a long time I have actually written a blog post again.
So, this was our first day and those were our first experiences with starting the challenge. We are both still super excited to see what comes out of it, so I will definitely see you guys in the next post!
Stay safe and stay healthy!
~Luna
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Intrigued to see how this whole thing started? Here you can read the prologue of this miniseries:
- Prologue – The Path to Self-ImprovementBefore I write anything else, I want to thank every single one of you that has so far liked, subscribed or supported this blog in any way, so thank you so much! It means so much more to me, than you can imagine! ❤️ So, there is no need to mitigate here: 2020 has been absolute crap for most of us, if not all of us. Admittedly, for me, there are some good things that have come out of 2020, however, the repeated lock downs and rule changes and heaven knows what not have been tiring, to say the least. […]
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