Surviving 2025

The practices that are currently helping me navigate work and life.

Mood.

Happy Friday, friends. It’s certainly been a long month and I’m very happy to see it go. I’m ready for the sun to stick around a little longer and for small excuses to celebrate (the birthday of the aquarian I reside with and Valentine’s Day both fall within the next two weeks). I’m ready to watch my friend’s vegetable gardens grow. (We did order our new garden boxes, but I’m not sure if we’ll actually grow anything just yet. We’re still getting the backyard in order.)

I was talking to a friend the other day and I asked them if adulthood is just accepting that you’ll always be some form of tired? They said yes. I don’t want to accept that, but I do believe it’s correct. A part of me wonders if there’s a way to be more productive by accepting the realities that aren’t likely to change. For the record, I fully realize this is a delayed realization. I think this is what coffee drinkers have been trying to tell me for more than a decade when I was too hung up on the fact that the drink tastes bad. (It does. I still don’t drink it.)

Anyway, as we continue into the second month of the year, I made a list of a few things that are helping me navigate both life and work:

For Work:

• Snoozed emails - As most of you know, I love to keep my inbox below 25 emails. I need to be able to see everything at a glance on my laptop without having to scroll, or I get overwhelmed. I usually use snooze do this, meaning there are about 50-60 emails at any given time that will come back into my inbox when I actually need to see them. For me – someone who needs to see something to be reminded of the task its related to – snooze is like a backup daily to do list. Lately, my inbox has been CHAOTIC because of a project I’m working on. I’m relieved there’s a tool that allows me to manage the level of chaos I see on a day-to-day basis. It’s like my own brand of professional delusion.

• Splurging on my office so I’ll use it - I don’t believe wellness or productivity requires giving in to our every retail desire. I actually think most of us should reflect on our relationship with consumerism, but I’ll deliver that rant on another day. I have, however, been taking the time to set up my new office in a way that encourages me to actually work there. My old desk wasn’t big enough for multiple monitors and the various paperwork + notebooks that would often be on my desks. My desk chair was pleather and had been coming apart in tiny pieces for more than a year. When we moved I pushed myself not to put either of these items on the truck, despite my frugal urges.
  My new standing desk is incredible and spacious. My chair is comfy. And, my file cabinet has a cushion on top of it that allows for my boyfriend to have a place to sit when he comes into my office for his occasional midday rant. I’ve purchased a walking pad (it’s sufficient, but you can absolutely find a better one) that allows me to prioritize movement even on the days where it’s cold and I’m stuck inside. For Christmas, my best friend got me an ergonomic mouse (after I remembered that I don’t actually use a left handed one) and my boyfriend bought me a pretty keyboard.
  Absolutely none of these things are necessary for work. But it’s been nice to practice investing in a space that I spend signifiant time in. Next up, I need to finally purchase some shelving so I can stop maneuvering my laptop camera around all of my unpacked boxes filled with books and supplies.

• Designated days/time blocks for productivity and structure. At my most productive, I thrive with a time blocked calendar. I don’t get excessive with it, but I sit down at the top of any week and make sure I have big enough chunks of time outside of conducting interviews and sitting in meetings to actually write and do work that requires deep focus. I block that time off on my calendar so that I don’t schedule anything that interferes with it.

For Life:

• Less bed rotting in the mornings. The girlies on the internet are talking a lot about author Mel Robbins and how her self care tips are helping them be productive in the mornings. Mel says when your alarm clock goes off, you should count down from five and get up immediately once you reach one. It’s a tip she suggests doing for anything you don’t really want to do.
  Me, personally, I count down like Ciara and envision launching myself out of bed and into space (probably a more chill place than *gestures at the world*). There’s more than one way to #levelup, folks.

• Taking 10 minutes each night to clear my text inbox. I’ve grown tired of my friends asking me why I always have so many unread messages so I’m working on doing something about this in 2025. I get a lot of texts – far beyond what I have the social capacity to deal with while also juggling meetings, interviews and my work email inbox. But, my personal relationships don’t deserve to be placed on the back burner. I’ve been taking 10 minutes every night to respond to the texts I missed during the day.

• Saying both “yes” and “no” more. For me, this isn’t a year of yes or a year of no. It’s a year of balance. And listening to myself. Yes, I want to be more present in my personal relationships, which might mean pushing myself to leave my home more often. No, that doesn’t mean pushing myself past my mental or social capacity to the point where it feels detrimental or doesn’t align with who I am.

• Taking more photos. Bad Bunny released the right album at the right time, OK.