It's been 2 years of WFH... how to NOT GO INSANE.

Hello! Good to see you. It suddenly struck me yesterday night that I have been working from home for over two years. So my living space has been my office space, workout space, where I eat. It's been everything for the past two years. And I'm just like... I have a couple moments here and there where I feel like I'm going insane. I feel it even more because I'm now living in a studio. She's living in a small little box now in New York City, but I'm still really enjoying it. I really, really like having my own space. But I have had moments where I kind of feel like I'm going insane. I'm going insane. But when I have those moments where I feel like I'm going insane, I like to kind of reel it back, try to figure out why do I feel like I'm going insane working from home? Of course, it's normal to feel cabin fever. It's normal for you to feel like, oh my god, I can't do this anymore. Was that slack? That was slack. And there's a couple of things that I try to make sure that I do when I'm working from home because it just minimizes the amount of crazy, feeling unmotivated. It minimizes me feeling just like itching to leave my apartment, which, you know, that being said, you should leave your apartment here and there if you can. Now, the first thing that you saw me do this morning is eat a hearty breakfast. Now, I know I sound like your mama. I know I sound like your grandma. I've never been the gal who can just roll out of bed and be like, okay, I'm going to have my coffee for my breakfast, and I'm going to eat my breakfast, and I'm not going to eat anything until lunch. Like, girl! You would walk into my apartment and find me on the floor. So, this has never been a problem for me, but I know I have friends. I have some friends, and if you're watching this, you know, you know who you are. I have some friends who don't eat a good breakfast. Like, their breakfast will maybe be a granola bar. Girl, no. I just find that when I eat a hearty breakfast, and that can be like as simple as my overnight oats that I had this morning. I like to I feel much more focused the rest of the day, and I can work without feeling like I need a snack until lunchtime. I find that if I do my planner, now specifically also the night before. Now, you'll hear a very common theme in this video is that when I really prepare myself the night before for the next day, I just feel less rushed and less stressed in the morning. If I write out my to-do list in my planner, which I did last night, I already know what I need to do. I don't need to spend that extra mental energy to sit down and think about what are my priorities for the day. I use the Hobonichi Techno Planner. It'll be linked down below. It can literally be a sticky note. It can be a piece of paper. It can be a note card. It can be on the notes app on your phone. I know people have different preferences, so whatever floats your boat, get on that boat. I just made that up. Something else that also is important when it comes to eating is trying to eat at the same times every single day. I've heard so many people, so many dietitians talk about this, about how important it is to kind of get your body in a routine, not just with your sleeping and your waking cycle, which I really, I really need to work on that. Try to eat breakfast at the same time every day. Try to eat lunch at the same time every day. Try to eat dinner at the same time every day. Something that also comes along with motivation and feeling motivated is your blood sugar. Crazy! When you eat something that's hearty, that's why I say hearty, like not just like a white plain bagel. That is not sustainable. So that just kind of spikes your blood sugar and then you have a crash and then when you have the crash is when you feel exhausted, is when you feel sluggish, is when you feel that urge to take a midday nap. Of course, I'm not a dietitian, not a doctor. I once was pre-med. Fun fact, but I'm not there anymore. Eating at the same time every single day, I feel like it keeps your blood sugar at a very like optimal level and makes sure that you never crash and when you don't crash, you don't feel the need to take a nap. Try to plan activities and things throughout the week and not just for the weekend. When I say plan activities, I don't mean like you have to go on for, you don't have to go for drinks every single night of the week. It can literally be planning taking a walk with a friend or even not even doing anything with anyone else, but it could be for yourself. So just little things like that I think just makes you look forward to something because let's say if it's Monday and you don't have anything planned until Saturday or Sunday or Friday night, you just feel like you're just dragging yourself along. You have nothing. It feels like you have nothing to look forward to. Okay and that's pretty much everything that I've done so far today. The main things that I've done up until right now, which is like I just had lunch. Right now, I'm gonna do that thing that I said that sparks my joy in my heart. My soul keeps me going for the rest of the day is my cafecito. Make sure to hydrate before you caffeinate. Hello, I'm on the floor right now because I just made my cafecito, but I'm a little crazy. I don't like getting my espresso and my espresso comes out hot obviously and then putting ice in it immediately because I feel like the ice melts a lot faster. So I put it in my fridge for like two minutes so that the ice doesn't melt when I put in the ice for my ice latte. Does anyone else do that? The other thing I forgot to mention that is super important to me is stretching. What do I do you ask? You came to the right place. A little bit of pressure. So what really helps me is the Pomodoro method. The Pomodoro method is essentially a system where you set individual timers that keep you on track and it also allows for you to take specific breaks that are timed as well. I think the original Pomodoro method is you work for 25 minutes and then you take a five minute break. I personally feel like 25 minutes is too short of a time frame for me to actually feel like I got something done. So instead of 25 minutes, I'll set a timer for about like 30 to 40 minutes depending on how I feel. Whatever I pick for that specific amount of time for me to be working is what I keep consistent with and it just allows you to kind of make sure that you're focused because in the back of your mind you're a little bit stressed. You feel that kind of like anticipation for the timer to go off. I am on my first five minute break. I put on some under eye patches. Does anyone else wear their eye patches like this? I just like the fat end under my under eyes because I feel like that's where I need the most support. In the five minutes that I have, I thought it'd be productive not to for me to talk to you about something that's been on my mind. I've come to realize when people take breaks, a lot of us tend to scroll on our phone. I'm really guilty of pulling up a YouTube video and watching a YouTube video or doing something like that. Doing something that involves another screen. So I'm just moving my eyes from my computer screen to another screen. It's just really hit me how that type of rest is not productive. It took me a while to realize in the first place that rest in and of itself is very productive. We weren't created to be sitting down all day to standing up all day or whatever it may be. Yay! Step one is done. I realize that rest is productive. That's something that I've had to shift my mindset around. The second step is learning how to make your rest productive and like I mentioned earlier, a lot of us move our eyes from one screen to another screen because we feel like we're not doing work anymore. We feel like we're getting rest but we're not actually getting rest. It's really hard. I'm not gonna lie. It's really hard to rest your mind completely but something I try to do is to go back, do another stretch, go for a walk or I'll listen to music and I'll start to dance. Honestly, dancing has been something that I've grown to love. I've always loved it but you know I would dance in my old apartment with my roommate there but now because I live alone, I have even more freedom to do that. A little bit of a chat back. It's also moving my body. Yeah, I think taking a proper rest is so important. That's my rant. That's my productive rest. Was it restful? A little bit. It was nice to talk about something that's been on my mind. Welcome back to my cooking show. We are back. I'm cutting up some garlic. I'm doing this thing where I'm in my treadmill reading a book on the treadmill era. I'm doing something for my body working out. I'm doing something for my brain by reading. I'm actually reading this book right now called... I'll show you what the book looked like in the title of the book but it is so good. I am very emotional but at the same time, I'm quite logical and I like to know the reason why things happen. Like whenever I go to the doctor and I have a problem, I'm always like okay so yes this is my diagnosis but why did this happen? Like what's causing this to happen? Because I've just found that when you put band-aids over not something that isn't the root cause, the root cause is still there. Yes, I'm reading this book. I'm really enjoying it. It explains things in very easy to understand terms if you're someone not familiar with neuroscience. Fun fact, I almost did major in neuroscience in college. I highly recommend the book but yeah I hope you enjoyed following me around today on just this day where I a felt run down but I also wanted to continue feeling motivated throughout the day especially after working from home for so long and just doing everything in my apartment. You can just feel so stuck. I'm just gonna cook dinner and that's about it. So I hope you have an amazing day. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I wish you the best. I sound like I'm signing off in email. I will see you in the next video. Bye! Adios!