simple self-care routine for when you don’t have time | small changes, big results 💫

Hello sweeties potatoes. If I'm being completely honest, I feel like I've been playing catch up since the new year began and I'm still catching up. The main difference though compared to previous years is that despite how there constantly seems to be an insurmountable pile of tasks and endless to-dos, I've yet to feel overwhelmed, burnt out, or so stressed to the point of being distressed. While I was planning for this year, I wanted to make a point to create a solid but simple routine for myself, even on the busiest of days, to ensure I'm making time to recharge and take care of myself and my mental health. As someone who has prioritized work above all else for the past few years, this is no small feat. So what has been working? While there's no shortage of self-care routines here on the tubes, I felt like most weren't as realistic and practical and take over five hours to do, so I wanted to share the simple and small lifestyle tweaks I've made during the three pockets of time in our day, morning, afternoon, and night, that have made huge impacts in helping me stay grounded when it just seems like there's not enough time in the day to do anything. P.S. There's always time, but more on this next week when we talk about how to manage time. Time manage like a pro. Thank you so much to Obey Fitness for sponsoring a portion of this video. More on this in a little bit. Let's get started. The very first adjustment I've made to my routine, and this is honestly the smallest adjustment that has made the biggest impact, is being mindful about what I spend my first minute doing upon waking up. For all of my life since getting a smartphone, this is how I've been waking up. My alarm would ring, I'd snooze for more cycles than I like to admit, eventually get to a point where I cannot snooze anymore, so I'll begrudgingly turn off my alarm and immediately start checking emails, looking at texts, and scrolling Instagram. With this routine, my focus is glued to my phone as soon as I open my eyes, and I'm sucked into this digital world that's very hard to pull myself out of for the rest of the day. This also sets a very reactive tone to my day as I'm neither present nor aware of my surroundings. The small adjustment I've made happened very ironically and serendipitously. It's ironic because it happened when I got my Apple Watch, something I'd set on record that I'd never get, and it was serendipitous because breathing was a notification the watch recommended on the very first morning I used it to help wake me up. Here's how I've been waking up now. My Apple Watch gently vibrates on my wrist without any sound. My phone is in the living room, nowhere in sight. I open the mindfulness app on the watch, click on breathe, and follow along the vibrations of the watch to inhale and exhale. Breathing for one minute as the very first thing to do upon waking isn't groundbreaking and may not sound like much, but guys, it has made all the difference, especially because how I was living before. For as much as I knew how important it was to mindfully and intentionally start your day, this is the first time in my life where I fully understood what it meant and experienced the benefits. I'm able to bring this minute or two of presence throughout the rest of my day. I found myself being far more aware and grateful of my surroundings, like taking advantage of little pockets of time to look out the window or look up while walking down the streets of New York to just honestly admire how amazing of a city I'm living in and how I'm grateful to be here and to be alive, something that I've definitely taken for granted. Okay, so after waking up, I run through my usual morning routine of brushing my teeth, morning skincare, and matcha. No adjustments here as the small series of habits have not changed much since I started making videos on self-care about five years ago. You guys know I'm a big fan of simple morning routines because I prefer to sleep until the very last minute I can before needing to be places. Before moving on, I just need to give another shout out for breathing. I usually just inhale my matcha like there's no tomorrow and sometimes choking on it. I'm not even joking here. Before rushing out the door and heading into the office, now that I'm a new woman who breathes, I find myself more and more choosing to take my time and slowly sip this delicious warm latte as I bask in the sun. The next small adjustment I've made is less about what I'm doing, although to me it means everything, and more about why I'm doing it. A question I asked myself inspired by Gary Keller's book, The One Thing, was what is the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary? In other words, what is the one thing that can and has helped me ground myself the most? Upon light reflection, because I already knew what I needed to do, I identified my one thing as reading the book of my spiritual practice Falun Dafa for at least an hour every morning. With constant reminders to look inward, to treat difficulties as learning experiences, and to have a kind and compassionate heart, this truly is my one thing. While an hour may sound like a long time, it's the sweet spot I found that works for me. As someone who has prioritized work over personal well-being for too many years now, the way I designed my schedule this year was to fit work around my non-negotiables rather than fitting my non-negotiables around work. These activities officially conclude my morning pocket of self-care. The next few hours are dedicated to work, more specifically shallow work and or meetings, as I like to leave my afternoons for deep work. Before we get to deep working, we have another pocket of time around noon and lunchtime. As a mid-afternoon pick-me-up, a small adjustment I've made is to squeeze in at least 15 to 30 minutes of movement to get my blood flowing. I will be honest, there's always a bit of resistance because I don't have time and there's always more work to be done, but work will always be there. No matter how much we finish, there will always be more. So, like reading, this has become my non-negotiable. Depending on the day, how much time I have, and how I'm feeling, there are three types of movements I have on rotation as options, because options are great. It keeps your routine fresh and gives you the autonomy of choice. The first is going for a walk to pick up lunch or a drink. The second is gentle qigong exercises to help strengthen and energize my body, and the third is doing a quick workout. The benefits of movement should be clear at this point, and I found that afternoon works best for me as it's usually the time I hit my first big energy dip. Since walking is pretty straightforward and I've talked about qigong recently, let's focus on working out, something I wanted to be more consistent with this year. In the depths of quarantine in 2020, I chanced upon Obey Fitness, which is a premium fitness platform, and it was love at first sight. I appreciate how aesthetic and clean but simple their studio looks, how high energy and encouraging the world-class instructors are, and how they offer daily classes along with endless on-demand workouts from sculpt to hit to yoga to strength. During lunch, I mostly only have about 30 minutes, so I usually filter by no equipment and 28 minutes, which is their signature class length. There's also 5, 10, and 15-minute express classes along with 45 to 60-minute workouts for days when I have more time, or over the weekend, or just when I want to challenge myself. The whole platform is super easy to navigate, filter, and look for classes including fitness level, body focus, and impact. My favorite class lately has been Sculpt with Catherine and Pilates with Mary. Here, I'm doing Sculpt with Catherine and struggling in the best way possible. Challenges are good, remember? There's truly something for every goal, mood, level, and schedule. If being more consistent with working out has also been one of your goals, or you want to join me in spicing up your workout routine and want to check out Obey Fitness, you can use Rowena for one month free, and the link is in the description box. To build healthy habits, it's known that if you reward yourself after performing the desired action, you'll become more likely to stick with a habit. This is Habit Formation 101, courtesy of Charles Duhigg. So the reward for movement is a mid-afternoon treat I enjoy along with my Beauty Within team, drinks. Whether it's something sparkly, milky, or chewy, sign me up. This, of course, is less about the drinks and more about giving myself something to look forward to during the day or the week. It can literally be anything. For me, sparkling beverages and boba is super low stakes and low effort, but the positive returns are high. The epitome of minimal input, maximum output. After all, a little midday treat yourself is fantastic for the soul, for our personal morale, and for company morale. I've been loving this prebiotic gut-friendly soda from Poppy. It tastes delicious, it's healthy, there's apple cider vinegar, but you can't taste it, and the flavors are super fun from strawberry lemonade to ginger lime to watermelon. It's just sweet enough to satisfy your sweet tooth without being loaded with sugar, and I already shipped a box to James and have been hard-selling and raving about this to my friends and family. So that's the sparkling. For the milky or chewy, it's, of course, boba. It truly is the perfect pick-me-up for our team. The moment someone goes, boba? Our whole team perks up without fail. In terms of my drink of choice, I go through obsessive phases with my drinks. For a while, it was Yakult Anything with Pudding. These days, it has been Winter Melon Lemonade with Ayu. It's ridiculously refreshing and nostalgic, which I'll get to more in a second. All in all, treating each other to drinks and inhaling boba is nice, but for this small self-care tweak, I thought, why not make my own drink? It's just water, honey, lime, and jelly. Here's where the fun part begins, but before we get to making Ayu from fig seeds, let's first talk about how I got here in the first place. As you guys may have seen from my vlogs, I'm generally working pretty late, which has been the case for the past few years. This is the very first adjustment I knew I had to make when I was calendar blocking my ideal weekly schedule and dreaming about what kind of life I wanted to live. It became very apparent that I had to set much healthier boundaries with my work. This means shifting my focus to what's most essential, my spirituality, myself, and my relationships, prioritizing better, being okay with things potentially falling through the cracks, being okay with not responding to emails within 24 hours. Once my mindset shifted, it was a lot easier for the rest to follow. Locking out of my sinsama and staying logged off after I shut down for the day, going home at a reasonable hour whenever possible, making time for myself, making time to socialize. Now that I know this is how I want to live my life, I'm able to put it on my calendar. Hence, row time and row days. So how I actually spend row time really depends. Sometimes it's tidying, sometimes it's date night jam, sometimes it's dinner with friends. This particular row day was spent cooking, including making Ayu. I was already deep in my Ayu obsession a few months ago and while feeling particularly homesick one day, my mom, being mom, mailed me some dried figs, which is what Ayu is made of. If you've been to Taiwan, you must have visited the night markets and if you've been to the night markets, you must have seen this translucent golden jelly. It's made from the gel of a specific type of fig seeds that's native to Taiwan and it's mostly tasteless as it's pretty much just water. However, the texture is phenomenal and it's what you drink it This was something I grew up eating in Taiwan and something I a thousand percent took for granted. Though it was my first attempt at making this, it was surprisingly simple and straightforward. The theme I was going for for this row evening, attempting to recreate a drink I've been obsessed with, was trying something new, learning something new, and challenging myself. Similar to how I've been brushing up on my Chinese to help me reconnect even more to my culture. Even though I haven't read in Chinese in a while and I knew the relearning curve may take some time, not sure if this is a good comparison to attempting to make my own jelly for the first time but I'm gonna make it. It was a cross I was willing to bear. While I used to have a very fixed mindset when it comes to things I may not be the best at right away because the voices in my head would just tell me why even bother, I was very mindful going in with the growth mindset reminding myself that while I may not be the best at this thing yet, with time I'll learn, grow, and potentially even surpass where I was. More of the story, make time for yourself, make time for what's important, challenges are fantastic, trying something new is great. At the end of the day, challenges really help expand our minds, stretch our limits, and teach us endless lessons along the way. And IU, as you guys saw, was a smashing dashing success. This is so good! Moving on to the next agenda for row time, cooking something nourishing for myself. Even if it's just one day a week, a small tweak I've been making is to cook more and to order less from DoorDash. I've pretty much perfected my simple but loaded miso recipe to the point where I'm comfortable with sharing so a video will drop eventually. I first make dashi, the stock base for miso soups, in a huge batch and pre-cut most of the veggies over the weekend so throwing this soup together is easy peasy. The impact of cooking for myself has been wonderful, this will be a duh of a statement. Home cooked meals really hit different. I feel so much better after eating my own meals, my body doesn't feel heavy, I'm not as floated, I have more energy, my brain isn't fogging. I've also realized that I genuinely enjoy the act of cooking. Me time to be by myself and alone with my thoughts. I'm a fan. Again, this falls under the category of carving out time from your day, scheduling it into your calendar, and being proactive with doing something nice for yourself, whatever it may be. Last but very not least and arguably the most important part of our self-care routine is the evening wind down. Here's some small tweaks I've made that have made an immense impact on my overall well-being. The first, as we briefly talked about, is charging my phone in the living room versus right next to my bed so that when I go to sleep and wake up my phone isn't the first thing I touch. It's just as important to set healthy boundaries with technology as it is to set boundaries with work and people and ourselves and everything else. Putting the phone outside of your bedroom is something I've always known could be helpful but I never actually did it and now that I did it, I am a full believer. Listen to the people, get yourself a real alarm, and leave your phone outside of your bedroom. Another adjustment I've made is FaceTiming my boyfriend a little earlier. After catching up towards the end of our convo, he usually accompanies me as I wash my face and get ready for bed. In the past, we'd chat, I'd meditate, we'd chat again to say good night which requires me to look at my phone and then I'll go to bed. Now, I say good night, put my phone outside, meditate, and go to bed which is a much more ideal and smoother flow. And to close out the evening, we have the ultimate act of reset and recharge which is meditating. At this point, we're all familiar with the benefits of meditation. While I'm fully aware of how amazing it is for me and how light it makes me feel, my biggest struggle is actually doing it consistently which is where properly planning my day comes into play. If I deem this as a non-negotiable, it is up to me to leave work at a reasonable time to get home at a reasonable time so that I'm not too tired and weathered to partake in what I've identified as one of the best acts of self-care for myself. So choose you, make time to do what you know is good for you, and know that we're all fully capable of making small adjustments to our routine that can positively impact our overall well-being. Small improvements, big changes over time. This video was a little throwback to the self-care videos I used to make a lot more of. Let me know any small tweaks you've made in your routine that has made big impacts because I feel like we're in a culture where we believe we need to do crazy grand things for us to be able to have crazy and grand results. In reality, honestly, minimal input, maximal output. Spoken like a true lazy gal but I think this is why I love productivity is so that I can productively do less things to get the same or even more results. Anyway, please share your small tips, small tweaks, small adjustments below. Thank you guys so much for joining and thank you again to Obey Fitness for sponsoring a portion of this video. I'll see you guys in next week's video. And in the meantime, if I'm not consistent with posting on YouTube, I've been more consistent with podcasts. So if you guys want to listen to podcasts, I have a podcast called Voice Hugs if you didn't know. There's also a vlog channel. Everything will be linked down below. Good day to you guys. Voice Hugs. I will see you guys next week. Bye!