If you haven’t read my New Year’s resolutions, a 30 day challenge is basically an attempt to build a habit, on my part. Until 2020 threw a wrench in everyone’s plans, I was doing pretty well with all my goals. Many studies say that it takes 21 days to build a habit. So I’m giving myself 30 days to build one just because time wise works better and it’s easier to coordinate. I obviously don’t want to overwhelm myself so I’m only going to build one habit during this time period. So as I embark on with my 30 day challenges, you all will hold me accountable.
This 30 day challenge will revolve around solidifying a nighttime routine - like washing my face and taking care of my body before going to bed. All my life, I’ve been a night owl but as quarantine has been dragging on and on, my night owl self has lost a lot of routine.
I have a lot of conflicting thoughts, not in terms of what they’re ultimately achieving, but in terms of timing. If you don’t want to read me complaining, skip this next paragraph.
It’s a given that it’s important to wake up at a constant time and sleep 8 hours. I like showering in the morning, because I like feeling clean before I start my day. I want to continue to fast until 12pm. I know I should fuel myself right after a workout but I just feel so gross doing work for 3 hours then going to work out. I also don’t want to workout after I’ve showered because then I have to shower again and that’s bad for the skin. And I can’t sleep until 12pm to workout then eat because I’m recruiting for jobs in NYC (while living in SF) and that would mean that I’ve lost most of the day that I could interview.
So in general, my routines aren't working for me. Something has to give.
The thing with exercise, I think any workout is better than no workout so I should do it at a time that makes me happy. My goal is to maximize the time that I’m free for interviews in NYC so that means I should be done showering by 8am. I also have an added benefit, if I work out earlier in the morning, I won’t be sharing the street with as many people so more space for social distancing.
So my choice with doing a night routine is twofold. First, I want to wake up at a consistent time everyday and feel like I got enough sleep. That means going to sleep at the same time every night. Getting 8 hours of sleep is super important so I want to give myself ample sleep opportunity. Since it’s much earlier than I can naturally fall asleep (I’m targeting 10pm), it’s important that I let my body know that it’s time to sleep. This takes a long time but a consistent routine helps the body associate an action (sleep) with a trigger (night time routine). Unwinding without electronics for an hour before bed also helps.
Second, I want to take better care of my skin. There are so many reasons why taking care of your skin is important. One of the main reasons I care is because preventative measures for aging is always better than treatment for aging. One thing that I care most about for skincare is to always put sunscreen on before I leave the house. Sunscreen protects you from harmful UV rays that really accelerate the aging of your skin. So, in my nighttime routine, I want to incorporate some preventative measures.
Process
Specifically, this is what I want it to look like:
Put phone away to charge
Set up sunlight alarm
If I’m sweaty, I’ll take a short shower (without wetting my hair)
Wash my face
Weekdays: apply toner, essence & lotion; weekends: face masks
Read until tired - either textbook or book
Listen to Alexa to fall asleep (sleep timer for 15 minutes)
Wake up, put on sunscreen and get ready to work out (run & abs)
Measuring Success
Qualitative:
If I’m able to wake up early and feel energized
How my face looks
If there are benefits like feeling more accomplished/easier to fast/losing weight, etc.
Quantitative:
How many times I’m able to keep up with my nighttime routine and go to sleep at the same time
How many times I go to workout in the morning, at least ⅔ times is good
What would make me stop:
If I still feel really tired 2 weeks in since I’m barely ever tired after the first 30 minutes of waking up; this would be considered a regression for me.
I wouldn’t stop if this happened but I would push it back by 2 hours if I start to get hangry (hungry & angry) by 10am.
Progress
I’ll be updating my status as I go along, with day 1, 7, 14 and the last day as milestones that I will write about here. You can think of this as a diary~
Before
Day 1 -
I think it might be too quick to tell if a nighttime routine is helping but I was able to wake up in the morning super refreshed and my skin felt pretty dewy.
Day 14
I actually didn’t want to talk about this midway because I actually got a hugeeeeee pimple in the middle of my forehead even though I’ve been diligently doing my routine. But that’s actually more from me not eating very well and also being super stressed than from my skincare routine.
But the good news is, I was able to wake up really early consistently. Even though I don’t fall asleep for a while, I’m conditioned to wake up at 6 at that point. I’ve also been very consistently working out which is amazing!
Last day
30 days of this challenge was definitely worth it. I do love that I’m able to wake up really early especially because I have so many meetings in the morning. I cant really tell if my skin actually got better but I do feel really great because I am able to even wake up before my 6am alarm and I’ve been consistently going to bed early enough.
Final Thoughts
I definitely want to continue with this. I thought this added a lot of structure to my life. I am also working on moving to NYC soon and my schedule will be all over the place for the next month so I don’t want to start another 30 day challenge.
So I will be continuing with this until probably, mid October?
10/10 recommend doing a nighttime routine to help easy you into sleeping early and waking up early.
