Day 23

Life with 12 new habits – Summary & reflections

The Advent Cal(m)endar contains habits to increase clarity, focus and calmness. Every second day, I open a door and post about my experiences.

Hi readers! Now Advent is almost over, Christmas is almost here, and I have reached my last habit:

Getting up at 9am (or earlier)

This might sound ridiculous, but if you have read my post about stopping work at 9pm, you know I am a night owl and tend to get up very late. Except for tomorrow, it seems…

So, I am reaching the end of the challenge! 🎉 Are you wondering whether I could stick to all my habits and whether my life has improved? No? Well, I’ll tell you about it anyway! If you don’t want to read about every single habit, you’ll find my conclusions at the end, along with a glimpse into the future of this newsletter.

Meditation for at least 10 minutes

As I have written before, I struggled with this one. I sometimes just fell asleep, and I completely forgot about it twice. However, in the last few days I have been better and have done it earlier in the day. I’ve mostly used guided meditations from the 3xOM Yoga YouTube channel – I find her voice calming and I like the simplicity and the nature in the videos. Meditation feels great and I want to keep doing it frequently, but realistically, if I set a goal of daily meditation, I set myself up for failure.

Taking a cold shower

This habit was relatively easy to establish, and it has made me feel fresh and strong every time. I will continue ending each shower with cold water.

No more than 15 minutes of mindless scrolling

I’m afraid I failed with this one... I did stop scrolling on classical social media sites like Bluesky, and my brain has felt less cluttered as a result. But I have caught myself scrolling on other websites many times, and sometimes I did not immediately notice. My daily scrolling time has certainly gone down (as I did stop whenever I finally noticed!) but it often has been more than 15 minutes. I hope that if I continue being mindful about it, I will eventually be able to catch myself earlier.

No work after 9pm

I managed to reliably stop working at 9pm or earlier, which I am very happy about! I expected to feel restless or bored, but most days I just read or exercised and felt relaxed. I will keep doing this unless there is any urgent work deadline.

Yoga or exercise for at least 30 minutes

I managed to establish this one as well. I didn’t feel that it was a big change as I exercised frequently before December already. Doing strength exercises makes such a difference to how I feel about my body and myself in general – it makes me feel more stable and solid. Unfortunately, I got a bit sick a few days ago and stopped exercising, but that’s life! This is a habit I definitely want to continue.

Getting rid of some recycling

My recycling is almost gone now! There is still a bit of cardboard left as the container I need to bring it to is full (whose fault could that be??), but instead of towers and mountains there is now just a small stack. Of course, I plan to continue getting rid of my cardboard regularly, but not every day.

Progressive muscle relaxation

This one was successful as well, and it does make me feel more aware of my body even beyond the time of the exercise itself. I certainly would like to continue doing this regularly, but probably not daily.

Reading emails only 3x per day

This is possibly the most important habit for my mental health. I get a lot of emails from colleagues that often require action. Having my mailbox open all day long means there is seemingly a constant demand for my attention and time. I don’t know whether this is common, but I instantaneously feel different when my email software and notifications are switched off – only then, I feel like I am actually alone (in a positive sense). It is hard to say whether I managed to stick to this habit, as on some days I got so many emails that I needed the whole morning or whole afternoon to respond, and therefore had my email software open for several hours. I definitely plan to maintain this habit as well as possible.

No more than 20 minutes of YouTube

I stuck to this one, except on one day when I felt too sick to do anything other than mindlessly watching videos. This habit has certainly made me read more (Stay tuned for a book review!). I am not planning to keep it though. I don’t want to spend hours watching videos each day, but given that I rarely watch movies or series, YouTube is an important form of entertainment – and watching the lives of interesting people in beautiful parts of the world is not such a bad use of my time. I just need to keep being mindful about what and how much I consume.

Journaling

I have kept up with this habit as well. Sometimes I wrote just a few sentences, but on other days, even though I initially thought I didn’t have much to say, I realised something was on my mind while I was writing. Overall, the four habits on my list that take time (exercise, meditation, muscle relaxation, journaling) all have made me feel calmer and more in control, but it is unrealistic for me to do them all every single day in the long run – in busy periods, this will be too much. So, in the future I will aim to exercise (or do stretching / Yoga) daily, but to just do one of meditation, muscle relaxation or journaling each day.

Having dinner without a screen

Well, this habit only started two days ago, so maybe you will not be too impressed to hear that I stuck to it. I have been listening to the Underland audiobook and got so into it that I kept listening to it well after dinner. This has been fun, but I think I will not necessarily stick to strictly screen-free dinners – as I’ve mentioned above, watching videos from time to time is fine as long as I am mindful of the content.

What I’ve learned this month

I knew it already (and maybe it’s obvious), but this month has really hammered it home: The more my attention is divided among different tasks, pieces of information, and people, the more restless and unhappy I feel. The main problem is an overload of fragmented information from the internet and email. Some of that is caused by my use of the internet for entertainment, but being involved in numerous projects as a scientist and volunteer does not help – I am required to interact with a wide range of people and seek out a lot of information for this work.

I immediately get calmer when I close my mailbox, and my brain gets into a focussed and creative mode when I turn off all devices that connect me to the world. For me, the positive effect of reducing overload is greater than that of meditation or journaling. And it seems logical: Mindful activities help clear up the clutter in our brains – but if we keep re-cluttering our brains with tasks and information at a fast pace, maybe the mindful activities just cannot keep up.

These realisations have helped me clarify my priorities, and I have decided to drop out of some roles and tasks that do not seem important to me. I plan to strictly do information-seeking and communication tasks in batches in the future, so that most of my day is free of them, and I plan to work off-screen and outdoors as much as possible.

The 13th habit – and what’s next

Of course, I’ve taken up one more habit: I’ve had to write a post every second day. This was one reason for me to start the Advent Cal(m)endar – I wanted to focus on a theme that ensures I write regularly. It has been an interesting experience. As soon as I had checked the habit for the day in the morning, I usually automatically started to plan the post, collect ideas and come up with a structure in my head. I could often only write later in the day and really looked forward to getting my thoughts on paper – in contrast to my old nemesis Meditation, writing did not feel like a chore.

You might be surprised to hear it, but my longer-term plan is not to run an everlasting Advent calendar (I am not sure I could manage more and more good habits)! This will still be a space dealing with how to live a calm, clear life, but there will be more focus on the topics I am most passionate about:

• Nature

• Minimalism & simple living

• Environmentalism & sustainability

• … and reflections on how these connect.

In case anyone has read to the end of this long post: I wish you very Happy Holidays, or, if you don’t celebrate, just a happy end to December and a great start to the new year! I hope you find some peace and quiet, and that you get time for the things you like doing the most.

All the best,

Hannah