What are some of your routines or habits?

Oh my, what a question! Where do I start? I feel like everything in my life is a routine.

When you get older and settle a little more into just living as an adult, you realize that a lot of your happiness is tied to just having your life together, and that means being organized, respecting your time, keeping the calendar updated. It also means doing what "needs" to be done, like all the chores, going grocery shopping, cooking, etc.

1. Sleep

• I started a habit this year that I wanted to go to bed at the same time every day. I'm getting to an age where I don't go out a lot anymore and fridays are getting free again for the first times in years. So, bed at 10.
• I stop all screens around 8:30pm, sometimes I go up to 9 if I feel like it
• Trazodone at 9 (I have a lot of sleeping problems so only that has helped, so I take that)
• Brush my teeth
• Go to bed and read
• Close the book when the pill hits, then sleep

2. Cleaning

• I have a small apartment with no rugs and all the furniture is either lifted (so I can vacuum under it) or totally solid (so the dust cannot go under, really)
• I tidy up every day after I stop all screens (it really only takes maybe a minute since I just put back stuff where it goes nowadays)
• I always make sure my dishes are done (I don't have a dishwasher), here's how I do it: I have my rack on the left of my sink. EVERY TIME I use some dishes, I rinse it off, if I cook I kinda do it all after, but even just toasts in the morning, I wash my knife and plate every time. This is the key! After the rack is 3/4 full or full, I do the dishes on that day. I just fill the sink with hot soapy water, put the dishes in the sink, wash, dry, put it away.
• Sunday evening I vacuum (takes about 10 minutes), do the laundry (easiest, but takes the longest; I do all my clothes (every week) and bed sheets every two weeks), clean my toilet/toilet sink (takes about 10 minutes). Sometimes I use a swiffer duster on the furniture maybe once or twice a month (takes about 5 minutes).

So yeah, my apartment is always clean, apart from the dishes, I clean my apartment maybe 2 hours a week? It's just spread apart every day because I don't let stuff "stay where it's not supposed to be"

3. Cooking
   I'm getting better at that, so this is what I do for now

• Since I live alone and work in a school, I eat at the cafeteria everyday. It's about 37.25$ for the whole week (5 lunch meals) which is not too bad for not having to cook/prepare stuff.
• I have a cooking app that gives me suggestions, I pick one I like and just buy groceries around it. I do that for maybe 2-3 times a week since I always have leftovers.
• I've been doing that for a while so I have a lot of recipes in my head now. I always try something new every week/month. Like last month it was paan pizzas and roasts.
• For breakfast I sometimes do omelets but honestly, I've been eating peanut butter toasts for like 30 years lol so I still do that

4. Working out

• I'm lucky because my school has a gym and we start classes at 9:45am so I arrive at 8-8:15, workout maybe 45-1h, 4 times a week (all week besides wednesday)
• I do slow reps for now, 5-6 exercices where I focus on a movement (I do pull, legs, full body, push). Sometimes I'll add a push/pull exercices in the legs because I feel like it
• I have a protein shake after/during the workout (2 scoops, ~700ml water)

5. Fun

• I always do an activity every week. Either it's see my family, one friend, whatever, I always do something because I know it makes me feel better. I have very good friends, probably around 6-7 people I can see alone and have fun with so it's cool that I have choice. It's friends I've kept for maybe 10 years at this point, some are new
• Every week evening is kinda busy, but I like to watch animes, play video games, talk with my friends, watch youtube videos and stuff.
• Every sunday is a "me day", I spoke pot, play videogames, eat ice cream, whatever the fuck I wanna do. I love it

As for the rest, I feel like I'm top of things, I love reading reddit and tildes, because I'm a curious person and any knowledge is good knowledge for me so I read random stuff every day. That's about how I live my life.

Nowadays my health doesnt allow for regular habits, but before I got sick I had a couple that worked well for me:

For 20 years I woke up and exercised every day before anything else. It worked great because I'm not a morning person but exercise helped improve my morning mood and energy. I found it helped getting started before I was awake enough to talk myself out of it.

When I got serious about music, I would practice as soon as I got home from work. Same basic strategy as the exercise-- get it in before all of the other stuff distracted me.

My cat is the best at helping me keep my routine.

She wakes me up at 7am.
I bring her out for a walk.
Feed her. Brush my teeth. Clean cat stuff.
Then I leave to exercise.
Return and shower.
Meditate

Begin work.

Lunch
Play with the cat
Meditate

Continue work

In the evening I feed my cat dinner
Exercise.
Return and shower.
Do the night routine of throwing the trash and stuff.
Sleep.

The routine always starts with the cat. The hardest part is starting it. But once I start going, it's easier to do the next step. Since the cat will demand I get up and feed her or play with her, I built my routine around the cat.

That has helped a lot.

Got a few very minor ones:

1. I keep my water on my night table overnight, but my morning meds on my dresser. When I take my meds, my water gets moved, providing a visual indicator that I took them in the morning.

2. I have meds that I need to take in the morning and evening. The physical reminder is that I put my watch on/off when I take those meds.

Both of these habits have stopped me from guessing if I took my meds or not, as I look at the physical reminder

I have exactly one routine and it’s a cappuccino in the morning (whatever time “morning” ends up being). Everything else can go, but this one is sacred and if I don’t have it, I have a meh day.

All through the workweek, I just put my laptop to sleep whenever I stop using it.

On Friday, when I leave for the weekend, I do a full shutdown.¹ It feels like a nice symbolic closure to my workweek.

Similarly, on Sunday night, as I'm preparing for my workweek, I shut my phone and smart watch off for a bit, just lie in bed with no stimulus or screens or anything, and have a brief moment of disconnected peace.

I then boot them back up (which also gives me minor benefits from actually restarting my phone regularly), make sure my alarms are set, and then go to bed.

1. Tip for anyone considering this: for reasons I'll never understand, Windows 11 doesn't actually shut your computer down when you tell it to shut down. So, if you're stuck with a Windows machine, you have to hold Shift while you click the menu option to shut it down to get it to actually shut down instead of doing a fake shutdown.

There's also an option in the control panel to disable "Fast Startup" so you don't have to hit Shift each time, but your work might not give you the user permissions to change that. (Mine doesn't)

My strongest habits relate to savings money in various accounts.

• $25 every Thursday from my main checking to a savings account.
• $35 every Friday from my main checking to my Roth IRA.
• Every Monday from my main checking to savings, $5 for each day in the previous week where I didn't spend more than $10.
• At the beginning of every month, another $100 to another savings account.
• And once a month, $25 to a different savings account.

I kinda squirrel money away into various accounts. Can't spend all my money if it's split up all over the place! I used to have really poor impulse control and shopping problems like a decade ago, so this is how I've tricked myself into not spending. Also I end up saving a decent amount each month. Kinda crazy how quickly these accounts grow. And then I use them for trips or bigger purchases.

Also created a skincare routine of sorts.

• Every night I use a facial cleanser and one of those Buff Puff exfoliating pads in the shower.
• Then I use a moisturizer before going to bed.
• Every Sunday and Wednesday, I use a facial mud thing after I shower before I go to bed.
• Every Sunday, use one of the Biore facial strip things to unclog pores. I'd use these more often, but they're kinda expensive.

Idk if it all works, but my skin feels nicer. And I do seem to get less zits and such. Could probably do more.

Though that wouldn't be as big of a problem if I had healthy sleep habits.

• On work nights (Sunday through Thursday), be OFF the computer by 11pm. I don't even have to go to bed, I just have to be off the computer, because being on the computer will keep me up later than I should be.
• Regardless, go to sleep by 12:30a.
• Wake up for work at 5:30, ±30min.
• Leave the house between 6:30-7:00a, to arrive at work between 7:00a-7:30a.
• Minimize evening naps; try to do that only on Thursday.

Sleep schedule is still a WIP, but I feel like I'm making progress. But then it gets blown up on the weekends when I'm up til like 4am...on the computer.

I think the last habit I have, which isn't exact is grocery shopping every other weekend. Doesn't have to be a full restock each of those weekends. But at least it keeps food in the house, which means I'm much less likely to want to eat out, which is expensive. So are groceries these days, but I think eating out is still more expensive.

I don't really have a routine except for going to the gym 3x a week. Personally, I find routines really depressing for some reason.

I know that my life would be objectively better if I went to bed at 10 every night, had a reasonable regular breakfast, planned my meals, had everything in the same place, and so on. When I've done that though, I don't know. It makes me feel too regimented and responsible and adult. I'm middle aged, but I still have that teenage rebellious spirit that makes me hate monotony, bed times, doing laundry, and so on, even though the only thing I'm really even rebelling against at this point is my own comfort.

Every morning starts with a coffee and cig (I know) in my bathrobe on my back deck watching the sun come up. Then some light stretching, then getting my dailies in Gems of War (F2P game but you don't have to spend money) for 5 minutes before my daily ablutions. Then log in to work.

Good habits save you time. And they are like grease to keep my life swimmingly.

So a few I implemented are:

AM:
Take my daily supplements. I use am and pm so I remember to take them.
Put away the dishes from the dishwasher.
Make breakfast and coffee.
Play wordle and NYT mini.
Take a shower if its a office day or WFH day.

Throughout the day only if I have a day off or WFH.
If I cook, clean up as I go. Put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher.
Start the laundry.

PM
Take a shower if I go out in the field/walk my dog (because of ticks).
After dinner, finish rest of the dishes and run the dishwasher.
Fold laundry if I have laundry.
Get ready for the next day.

I have to take my pills at night in a very specific order, otherwise I can't sleep. Not because the medicines interact, but because it's going to drive me crazy that I didn't take my medicine the "right" way. It goes Capsules, large pills, dissolvables, small pills, ibuprofen (as needed). This order includes any medicines and supplements I need to take on a daily basis. Currently I take 6 capsules, 4 dissolvables, 1 large tablet, and 5 small tablets.

I don't have too many habits anymore. I drink coffee every morning, and can count on one hand the number of days I didn't have coffee sometime in the day. I also play a bunch of crossword and word puzzles in the morning with my coffee. (WaPo Mini, NYT Mini, Wordle, Whittle, WaPo On the Record, WaPo Keyword, Whittle (I'm not good at it though), Raddle, Connections, Strands, Merriam-Webster Missing Letter, and on Puzzmo, the crossword and Pile-up Poker, although not so much lately as they just recently started paywall. )

As someone who was chronically dehydrated for many years and did not realize it was the cause of a few health issues, I now have a 48oz container on my desk which is impossible to ignore. When it's empty I refill it. I've refilled it as many as 3 times in a day, so I'm much better hydrated now.

I also have developed darned good oral hygiene. I had a lot of cavities as a kid (or rather, the dentist claimed I did, leading me to a lifetime of fillings that needed to be redone every so often), my teeth are crowded and hard to floss without ending up with floss in pieces. I get pockets in my gums. Last time I went for cleaning my hygienist threatened to make me come in for deep cleaning (I am skeptical of it doing much more than funding my dentist's kids' college education), so I made a deal with her to buy one of those water flossers. It's an awkward beast but actually quite good at keeping away plaque. I'll be seeing her in a couple weeks so we'll see if it actually works as advertised. I also started on Invisalign a few months ago, so now I'm water flossing twice a day and brushing twice a day (though the morning brush is only for one minute; evening is the full two). Not sure if I'll maintain that when Invisalign is over -- really too soon to say.