We are officially in the new year, and we are well on our way with our New Year’s Resolutions… hopefully. I had seen a few ‘ins and outs for 2024’ lists for the new year, so I thought I would try my hand at my own list. This list of things is slightly different to my New Year’s Resolutions, but they are habits that can help support me with them. Let me know if you have any of the same, or whether you have some different ideas.

in

sun protection

I don’t think there’s any disputing how important staying protected from the sun is, I just don’t always do it. I know, I know, in 2024 we know how detrimental to our skin the sun’s rays can be, but I sometimes forget my hat and sunglasses. I barely ever wear sunscreen (in fact, I kind of hate it), I often wear sleeveless shirts outside in the middle of the day, and if I’ve washed my hair the night before, there is no way I’m wearing a hat and ruining my fresh hair. At least once every summer I get sunburnt. I’m lucky that I haven’t got a lot of moles, and I don’t spend hours in the sun, but that’s doesn’t make me invincible to skin cancer.

In Australia, we are exposed to some of the harshest and most dangerous levels of ultraviolet radiation (UV) in the world. UV radiation can’t be seen or felt and can be harmful on warm, sunny days as well as on cool, cloudy days. The more skin that is exposed to UV radiation, the greater the risk of damage and skin cancer. And the damage isn’t always going to be cancerous. I probably don’t have to remind you that spending time in the sun can cause premature aging, which leads to leathery, wrinkly skin.

So I am declaring here, in writing, to be more committed to protecting my skin from sunburn. I will wear sunscreen whenever I am going outside, with the intention of reapplying. I will wear clothing that protects me from the sun. I will always wear a hat, regardless of when I last washed my hair, and I will always wear my sunglasses outside.

Like I said before, I hadn’t been wearing sunscreen because I didn’t like it, mostly the greasy feeling you get once it’s applied. Let me tell you, there are few things worse than applying a fresh layer of sunscreen only to have sand stick to you. So I have been on the hunt for some sun-creams that don’t make me feel gross, and this is what I’ve found so far. The Banana Boat Dry Balance SPF 50+ spray sun-cream is great for all body protection. It has a dry, matte finish so nothing sticks to you, and the smell reminds me of beach holidays with my family as a child. If you’re looking for something that is reef safe, you can try the SunButter Original Reef-Safe SPF50+ Sunscreen. This is a nice, thick formula, so it takes a little to work in, and it’s a little greasy, but it smells nice. Don’t bother with the tinted version of this. The colour transfers to clothing, which we don’t want.

sleep

Again, no one is disputing how important sleep is, I am just not very good at it. I might go to bed at 9pm, and wake up at 5:30am, but I will only get five to six hours of sleep. I usually wake up feeling awful, headachy, groggy, not ready to take on the world.

I wear a Garmin Venu 3 smart watch, which tracks my sleep and it gives me some interesting metrics. Over the last month, my average sleep score has been 52 out of 100, I sleep an average of 6 hours and 22 minutes a night, even though my sleep need is 8 hours and 41 minutes. I am quite often in bed well before 10pm, but my body doesn’t go to sleep until 10:39pm, and my average wake time is 5:31am. Just for interest, I don’t have an alarm, I have a dog who believes he should be fed at first light. Garmin also provides you with something called a Body Battery, which I really love. Ideally your battery should be at 100 when you start the day, and mine, over the last four weeks, on average, is at 46.

I am going to do something about this. I have got some ideas on what I can do to help improve my sleep and I am going to try them all. I’m going to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. I am going to try meditation before bed, sleepy time tea, putting my phone away before bed, new pillows and blankets, supplments, anything. If you have any tips for me, leave them in the comments below.

cooking at home

I love to cook, I love to buy kitchen appliances, I love reading new recipes, and I love eating. So why don’t I cook more at home? I wouldn’t say I get a lot of food delivered anymore, but I do take a lot of shortcuts with prepared foods from the supermarket.

Over the last few months I have, we’ll say, invested, a lot in new kitchen equipment. I have bought a whole set of new Scanpan cookware in the Boxing Day sales, and I picked up a Thermomix from a neighbour for an absolute steal. I have a KitchenAid stand mixer with a host of attachments, I have an airfryer, I have a multi- function cooker that has functions like slow cook, pressure cook, steam, and sous vide. I also have a nicely sized kitchen. I have all the equipment, but I just don’t use it.

Cooking at home has an enormous number of benefits. It can be a creative outlet, a way of expressing love for your friends and family, it saves you a substantial amount of money, and you are more likely to eat nutritiously if you prepare the meal yourself.

This year I am planning on trying a new recipe every week, and I will be taking you along with me. I will share recipes that I have really liked so you can try them as well. So watch this space.

time blocking

I am not a good multi-tasker. I like to focus on one thing at a time, but I struggle with staying on task. There are so many things that need doing, a lot of those are priorities, and it can be overwhelming. So I thought I would give time blocking a try.

What is time blocking? Time blocking is a way of scheduling your day into specific blocks of time. Sounds pretty obvious, right? Each block represents time dedicated to completing a specific task. It’s been known to help with clarity, intention, and boundaries for your day. You know exactly what you’re supposed to do, when, and for how long.

I use a digital planner with the app Notability on my iPad (below). I can set out my week using the time blocking method and it shows me exactly what I need to do and how long I have dedicated to it. There are a tonne of YouTube videos about time blocking, so I will spend some time finding an exact method that works for me. My biggest challenge with this will be sticking to it. I am great at planning, and less great at doing what the plan says. But if I see value in scheduling my day this way, I will definitely want to keep going with it.

adventures

I had been out with friends for drinks, and on the cab ride home, I wrote a note in my phone, “When I’m feeling sorry for myself, get out, do an adventure, see another part of the world.” While my drunken grammar may not have been perfect, the idea is flawless. I am always my happiest when I am out for an adventure, whether that be exploring another part of Sydney, taking a road trip up the coast, or tripping across the globe.

Since the pandemic, like most people, I found myself on less and less adventures (obviously), and I have struggled to get back out there. But since getting a small taste of travelling again, I want to dive back in and see more of the world around me. There are so many places I want to see, both here in Australia and across the world. There are continents I haven’t visited yet, there are trees Harry hasn’t peed on, so many places and people we haven’t met. So this year I will make it my mission to spend less time at home and more time out and about.

Harry will be coming on some of my adventures, but I may also take some solo trips, maybe even overseas. It is true what they say, travelling will only make you richer. Maybe not financially richer (unfortunately), but you’ll feel amazing.

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out

mess

Ahhh mess, if only it could be eliminated all together. Nobody likes mess. There’s nothing good about mess, but it keeps coming back. Forever. While I can’t get rid of it entirely, I can put things in place to stop it from getting out of hand. I say this as I look out over my living room and see the last remains of a plastic bag my dog has torn apart.

I find mess really stressful, as I’m sure most people do. When I was on holidays I had someone who would come in and clean my room daily. There was nothing lying around for me to trip on, no clumps of hair in the shower, everything was in it’s place. tidy and clean. When I got back into my apartment, there was crap everywhere from my scrambling to fit everything in my suitcase before I left. Immediately I was dropped back into reality, and I didn’t like it. This gave me the idea to put a system and schedule in place to keep things tidy and keep mess stress down.

Firstly, there are some tasks that you just have to do daily, it’s just a fact of life. Because I have floor boards, sweeping and vacuuming is one of those things. Putting plates and cups in the dishwasher, making the bed, wiping out the bathroom sink, tidying collection surfaces like dining tables. There are other tasks like cleaning the shower and toilet, dusting, and laundry that can be done less often, so scheduling these in for a particular day of the week will help with this.

Using the thirty second rule can also be helpful. If you see a task that needs doing that takes less than 30 seconds, just do it now. But this should only be done when you have free time, not when you’re meant to be writing a report.

mindless scrolling

The time-suck of mindless scrolling is strong. One minute you think you’ll check your phone, check social media just before you go to bed, make sure there’s nothing you’ve missed for the day. The next minute you realise it’s 1:49am and you’ve gone down the YouTube rabbit hole of theoretical cosmology and you’re debating whether aliens exist or not.

It’s a tough habit to overcome. We are instantly rewarded with each flick of the thumb. A new piece of information, a new video, a new idea. With every swipe we get a rush of dopamine, encouraging us to keep going. There might be a better, more interesting post just below this one. I’ll never know if I don’t swipe. But it doesn’t come without it’s downsides. Aside from the huge waste of time, looking at life through a phone will ultimately make you miss something happening right in front of you. Plus, we need to take a look at ourselves if we’re more interested in what other’s are doing than living our own lives.

If you have an iPhone (you can probably do this with Android devices as well), you can take a look at your screen time. I will be brave and say that I spend, on average 4 hours and 37 minutes on my phone each day. That’s a huge chunk of the day, looking down at a colourful rectangle. Proudly, social media is not my most used app type, but still, it’s not a positive thing to be doing.

This year I am making some changes. I will not allow myself to use my phone in my bedroom. My apartment is not that big, I can leave my phone in the living area, no big deal. I am also looking into using the different Focus settings that iPhones have. Steph Pase has a great video showing you how to do this and what helped her reduce her screen time. These are my ideas for now, no doubt I will come upon some more throughout the year.

procrastination

Fun fact, you can start a task at any time of the day, it doesn’t have to be perfectly on the hour, or half hour. This is a fact I quite often forget, especially if I am not looking forward to completing it. When I am at work before I start a task, I always check the time. If it’s not exactly 10:00, I will do things to past the time until it is like, check to see what is happening on social media, play a game on my phone, go to the toilet, fix my chair, clean out the cupboard, offer to drive my colleague to the airport (even if they don’t need to go). And then if I miss 10:00, I will fill the time until 10:30. Ladies and gentleman, this is called procrastination.

Procrastination is the habit of delaying an important task, and doing something else, or nothing, instead. The thought of doing this important task is so awful that you just keep putting it off and off and off. But then when you actually do the task, it really is never as bad as you think it will be. Or it might be worse, but you did it, so now it’s done, and you can move on.

There are a lot of theories as to why we procrastinate, but a big one for me is that I don’t know which thing I should do first. I need to mop my floor, but I also need to take out the garbage, but I also need to take Harry to the park, and write that email, and the list goes on and on. Hopefully my time blocking strategy will help me with this.

Breaking tasks down into smaller steps can also help. Sometimes a task can look so humungous that it can be overwhelming and paralysing. You’re not going to attain any sort of reward quickly, which makes the task a lot less enticing, even though it is still important. If you break these up into smaller, less daunting steps, you are going to feel rewarded a lot sooner, you will gain momentum, and you will get that ugly task done and out of the way.

long periods of sitting

I’m sure we have all heard the anecdote that sitting is the new smoking. Well, that’s not exactly true, you can’t die from second hand sitting, but it’s still not the best way for our bodies to spend the majority of the day. Based on the way the human body is designed, being static is not ideal. We have muscles and bones and joints and connective tissue that feel much better when they’re frequently moved, not hunched over a keyboard or sunk in a couch.

Towards the end of last year, I was experiencing extremely tight muscles in my glutes, my hip flexors, and my lower back. They got so tight that I started to get an impingement in my hip. This is where the joint is misaligned and the wrong parts of the bones are coming into contact with each other. It is painful. I had an episode where my left hip got stuck in the same position for seven hours because the joint was so out of alignment. A huge contributor to this was sitting for long periods of time.

Thankfully I am now on the road to recovery, but to stop it from happening again, I will be keeping tabs on how long I am sitting for. While I can’t change my work hours, I can reduce the amount of time I spend sitting at my desk. I have a sit/stand desk I can use more, and a small dog that would be happy for a play or a walk. I am also going to look at using the time I am in meetings where I don’t need to present, as walking or stretching time.

impulse shopping

If impulse shopping was an Olympic sport, I would represent Australia. I may have mentioned before that I impulse purchased an apartment. If that doesn’t scream Impulse Shopping Olympian, I don’t know what does? This is not a brag, it is an indicator.

Towards the end of 2022, I noticed that my wardrobe was quickly running out of space. I was experiencing that common phenomenon of a wardrobe full of clothes, but nothing to wear. But how could this be? I am always shopping. I spend a large portion of my time researching articles of clothing and how these can be styled. Yet, I was always wearing the same outfits. The app StyleBook could objectively show me that.

I was shopping for my future fantasy self. I would see a smart pair of pants and a cool blazer, and I would buy them in a size that was my fantasy size. Or I buy a beautiful dress that would be best suited to a black tie affair, when I would spend the vast majority of my time at home or at work, not going to gala dinners. I also saw that I had spent an absurd amount of money that would be much better placed in my bank account than theIconic‘s.

At the beginning of 2023, I set out to change this, by starting a No-Buy year. This meant no buying clothes, or shoes, or accessories for a whole year. And I did pretty well. I got to July without having spent a single cent of any clothing. But I did notice that some of the clothes that I had been wearing were getting a little tatty, and were really not in a state to wear outside of my apartment. So I changed course. I decided that I would only buy to replace. But when I gave myself an inch, and you better believe I took a mile. I did go back to shopping. But what I had learnt through that process was to buy clothes in my size, for my current lifestyle. So just about everything I had bought in 2023 I have worn.

I will continue to work on this for 2024. I am going to implement the wish list tactic. If there is something you like, or you are thinking of buying, you write it on a wish list, which is just in the Notes app on my phone. Each time I think about wanting this, I will add the date next to the item on my list, and then after 30 days, if I have thought about this on multiple days, I can consider buying the item. I’m not eliminating shopping from my life, just the impulsivity of it.

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