Okay, so chances are in the last few days,
you have felt tired or depleted, but there are a few simple habits that almost anyone
can do that are proven to boost your energy. And in today's video I'm going to walk you
through the eight simple practices I've personally incorporated into my daily routine that have
given me the energy to build a successful business. Oh, and at the end of the video, I'll share
the one technique I use when everything else fails. Let's get to it. My first tip is to go outside and get some
morning sunlight as soon as you can after waking up. Let me just say, this is not how I used to
start my day. I used to start my day in the way I think
a lot of people do, scrolling Instagram, checking email until I eventually rolled out of bed
feeling pretty anxious. But a few years ago, I decided to swap my
morning screen time for a morning walk outside. And honestly, it has had huge benefits for
my energy and focus, not just in the morning, but throughout the entire day. And apparently, scientists agree. They say that when we view sunlight first
thing in the morning, we get so many benefits out of it. It improves our mood, as well as our energy,
and it sinks our circadian rhythm, so it primes us for better sleep at night. I like to combine my sunlight time with a
20 to 30 minute walk in the morning, get my body moving. I find that I have more creative juices flowing
that way, and I'm just more excited to start the day. But if you're thinking, "Listen lady, I've
got three crazy kids. I have to get ready for school in the morning,"
that's fine because even two minutes on a sunny day has been shown to have lots of benefits. Oh, and you don't want to look directly into
the sunlight, just kind of in the direction of the sunlight, although it is pretty early
right now, so the sun isn't too strong. But if your eyes start hurting, definitely
look in a different direction. On the extremely rare, rainy or foggy days
we have here in Southern California, I can't get my morning sunlight. I will instead take this desk lamp and shine
it at my face while I work for 30 to 60 minutes in the morning. It's not the same as sunlight, but it's better
than nothing. Tip number two is to consume caffeine consciously. There are two parts to this. Let's talk about the more obvious one first. Don't consume your caffeine too late in the
day. I think most of us know that intuitively,
but the science behind it is pretty interesting. So, caffeine on average has a half-life of
five hours, sometimes six hours. And what that means is let's say you have
a cup of coffee at 4:00 PM every day. It's going to peak in your system around 4:30 or 5pm
PM, which is great if you want to go to the gym and feel energized. But five hours later at 9:00 PM, when you're
maybe trying to wind down and get ready for bed, you still have half of that caffeine
left in your system. So, don't drink your coffee too late in the
day. Now for the not so obvious part, drinking
caffeine too early in the day, just like drinking it too late in the day, can also negatively
affect your energy levels. This is something I learned from an excellent
podcast, The Huberman Lab. That's because there's a molecule in our body
called adenosine. I'm not a neuroscientist like Dr. Huberman,
so I'm absolutely going to oversimplify this, but basically adenosine makes us feel sleepy. So when we wake up in the morning after a
good night of sleep, our adenosine levels are naturally low and they continue to get
even lower. But if you drink caffeine as soon as you wake
up, it's going to interfere with that natural process. So by the time your coffee wears off at let's
say one or 2:00 PM, you have more adenosine, i.e. more sleepiness in your system than you
ordinarily would. So, what Dr. Huberman recommends and what
I've been doing for the last year or two is to wait an hour and a half to two hours after
you wake up to have your first cup of caffeine. In sciencey terms, that means your body is
able to naturally clear those adenosine levels. And in non-science terms that everyone can
understand, that basically means you're so much less likely to have that afternoon crash. Now I know some of you're going to be like,
"This crazy energizer bunny lady doesn't get it. I need my coffee in the morning," but I do
get it. When I was in law school, I used to start
every morning with a 16 ounce Americano. I'd have another one after lunch, and then
another one at 5:00 PM. I basically was having nine shots of espresso
every day and I was a caffeine fiend. So I do get your plight, but I know there's
a better way for you. As to the type of caffeine, I think it's a
pretty personal decision. These days, I'm not as caffeine dependent,
so I find that coffee makes me feel a little racy, not that kind of racy. So instead, I drink matcha every morning. It has enough caffeine to make me feel energized,
but also has l-theanine, which makes our bodies feel relaxed, so I get that calm, steady energy. Tip number three is to remove the biggest
distractions from your work environment. One of the greatest lies we've been told is
that we humans can multitask. We cannot. What we think of as multitasking is really
just us very quickly switching back and forth between different tasks. This not only makes us more tired and less
energized than if we were to work on a single task at a time, but it also makes us less
productive. It can take upwards of 20 minutes to get back
into the flow of things once we've been disrupted. Now multiply that 20 minutes by every time
we get distracted, and honestly, I have no idea how anyone gets anything done. One of the ways I try to prevent this energy
drain is to start my workday by removing the biggest distraction from my workspace, the
cell phone, this little thing. I find that I have so much more energy and
focus and get more work done when this thing is out of my office, ideally in another room,
tuck away in her drawer, so I don't see it even when I take a break. And the reason I do this is that even if my
phone is face down or completely turned off on my desk, it's still implicitly distracts
me. It's like it's saying, "Hello, open me." There are so many fun surprises in here that
are more interesting than whatever you're doing right now. So out of sight, out of mind. But if you are really addicted to your cell
phone, you might need to take a more aggressive option. I recommend getting one of these timed lock
boxes. Basically, you put your cell phone on the
box, set a timer for let's say 25 minutes, and then you cannot access your phone for
those 25 minutes. There's no emergency valve. You are stuck with your decision. I feel like these days, I no longer need to
use that for my cell phone, but I do use it when my favorite dark chocolate goes on sale
and I don't want to eat it all in one day. Can also download the app Freedom. You put in the websites and apps you find
distracting. Set a timer, and then Freedom will block you
from using those apps during that time period. It can be just for 30 minutes, or it can be
every day from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. If you try to access that app or website during
the window, Freedom will remind you that's time to get back to work. Tip number four for improved energy is to
avoid eating a sugary breakfast. Look, as a kid who grew up in the nineties,
I ate a very standard American diet for breakfast, sugary cereals of all kinds, poptarts of all
kinds, and of course Eggo waffles. Luckily though, as a kid, you have pretty
limitless energy. But as with most things in life, as you get
older, as you become an adult, it gets a little more complicated. As we age, when we eat really sugary foods,
especially on an empty stomach like we do when we break our fast in the morning, it
causes our glucose levels to spike and then to inevitably crash, and that leaves us with
that sluggish low energy state. So, what I try to do at least 90% of the time
is to eat a savory breakfast, ideally one with a good amount of protein, fat and fiber,
something like seeded whole grain toast with avocado and smashed chickpeas and hemp seed,
or just leftovers from last night's tofu curry. I find that when I do this, my energy levels
are higher and more sustained throughout the entire day. And I am by no means saying that donuts are
pastries are bad foods you have to avoid. I like them and I eat them, but I try to eat
them as dessert after a meal instead of on an empty stomach like for breakfast. But I'm definitely not perfect when it comes
to this because I am a food blogger and my job is to test and taste recipes basically
all day long. So if we are testing my pancake recipe for
the 20th time because I want to get it right, I'm just going to go ahead and have some pancakes. But on those days, I tried to do this next
technique to make sure that my glucose levels don't spike, which is to go for a walk after
a big meal. Studies show that going for a walk after a
meal for as little as two to five minutes can help regulate your digestion and your
glucose levels. For me personally, going for a walk after
lunch, again, even for five minutes, has been huge in helping me avoid that afternoon slump. If you can't take a walk after a meal, maybe
because you don't have time or it's winter in Minnesota and that sounds miserable, there
are a couple other things you can do. So instead of taking the elevator to your
next meeting, you could take the stairs after lunch, or if you have a Zoom call coming up
and you have some wireless headphones, just pace back and forth at your desk. It's not the same as walking, but it's definitely
better than sitting still. Tip number six is to develop and implement
a workday shutdown ritual. I learned about this concept from the book
Deep Work by Cal Newport, and the basic gist is that you take five to 10 minutes at the
end of your workday to prepare for the next workday, to get all of your to-dos and work
worries out of your head and onto paper. My personal workday shutdown ritual is to
write all the things I want to get done tomorrow in this planner, including things I didn't
get to today. Once I have that list, I then start to schedule
specific tasks into specific time slots. This is known as time blocking. And while it might sound rigid to some people
to schedule every hour of the day, including when you exercise or eat lunch, I personally
find that it's liberating and actually gives me energy back, because once I started doing
this ritual, I stopped thinking about all my work to-dos at night when I was trying
to unwind and go to sleep because I had already written them down. So now I fall asleep quicker, which obviously
leaves me more energized in the morning. Another benefit is that I don't have to spend
the time or energy in the morning thinking about what's the biggest thing I want to accomplish
today? When am I going to get it done? How am I going to fit it around my meetings? Because I've already done all that work for
myself the night before. And when I skip this ritual, which sometimes
happens, I just find that I have less energy in the morning, I'm more distracted, and it
takes me a little longer to get into the flow. Whatever your specific shutdown ritual is,
I think it's really helpful for folks who work from home because it creates this nice
structured separation between your work life and your after work life. Tip number seven is to use temptation bundling
to get yourself to do hard things. I think everyone has experienced that end
of the day feeling where you really need to do something important, whether it's folding
the laundry or getting on the old exercise bike, but you feel like you just don't have
the energy. In reality, most of us, at least those of
us who don't do manual labor during the day, we do have the energy. What we lack though is willpower. And what I've found to be really helpful in
these situations, which I struggle with all the time, is to do temptation bundling. This is a term invented by the researcher
Katy Milkman in this book, and the basic concept is that you bundle or pair an activity you
really like that gives you immediate benefits with an activity you really don't want to
do but that provides long-term benefits. In my own life, I need to do physical therapy
exercises on a regular basis because I just have some old injuries, but usually I don't
have time to do them during the day. By the time 8:00 PM rolls around, I have a
million excuses to not do them. Nisha, this is your reminder to get your (beep)
off the couch and exercise. Alexa, stop. However, a few months ago I started using
temptation bundling to get myself to do my physical therapy. What that means is, at night, I can't watch
a TV show, it's an activity I like doing, it's an easy way for me to unwind with my
partner, unless I start by doing my physical therapy exercises. It's gotten me to be so much more consistent
with it, and I honestly kind of look forward to my exercises now because I know that I'm
doing something I also enjoy. Obviously, not all difficult activities can
be paired with watching TV, but try to think about how this applies to your own life. Maybe you can only listen to your favorite
podcast if you're also tidying up the house, or if you really want to go to that fancy
coffee shop that sells $9 adaptogenic mushroom lattes, maybe you can only do that if you
also spend some time there clearing out your email inbox. In a minute, I'll share the strategy I use
for more energy when all else fails. But for now, let's talk about tip number eight,
optimizing your sleep environment. Possibly the best thing you can do for more
energy that no pill or energy drink or even workday routine can do is to get enough good
quality sleep on a consistent basis. Remember when I told you back in law school,
I used to drink nine shots of espresso every day? I had a terrible time sleeping then no surprise. These days, I get seven and a half to eight
hours of sleep each night, I fall asleep easily, and I wake up super energized. There are lots of things I do to achieve that,
including, if I'm being honest, not having children. But today, I'm going to talk about just three
of them. If you're interested in a full sleep routine
video, let us know when the comments below. The first thing I do to optimize my sleep
environment is to keep the bedroom as cold as comfortably possible. For our house, that's about 68 degrees Fahrenheit,
sometimes cooler. In the summer, we use the AC to make that
happen. And in the winter, our house is very poorly
insulated, so it's already freezing cold. The second thing is to keep our bedroom as
dark as possible. We're renting our house, so we didn't want
to invest in a pricey blackout blind system., So we opted for the super, super, super budget
option, which still works pretty well. We hang a black curtain on our curtain rod,
and we take it down every morning so that it doesn't look like vampires live there. Raise your fangs all who agree. Well, Max does all of this. I'm too short to reach the curtain. Third, we sleep with a white noise machine. Maybe it's because I lived in New York today
for eight years, but I find it very difficult to fall asleep in a super quiet environment. It's eerie. It's like I'm in a horror movie waiting to
be murdered. So instead, we sleep with a white noise machine. It helps us fall asleep faster. We recently upgraded to the Hatch restore
alarm, I believe it's called, and it has lots of different sounds you can fall asleep to,
nature sounds, white noise, very calming, and it also acts as a natural sunrise simulator
in the morning, so it wakes you up more calmly and gently than an alarm clock. If you're interested in one of these, I've
got a link in the description box below the video. Okay, so despite my best efforts, sometimes
I just have one of those days. Maybe I didn't sleep well or I'm distracted
by my never ending thoughts. If I need to be productive or energized on
those days, I will do something that I absolutely hate. I will take a cold shower. Oh boy. And I hate it because I'm already always cold
all the time, so why would I want to get a cold shower? Well, it's because cold water immersion has
been shown to dramatically boost your dopamine levels, which gives you more energy and motivation. In the moment though, it's mostly painful
and I hate everything and everyone around me. But I know that if I can suffer through two
minutes of a cold shower, I will feel so refreshed and have energy for several hours. All right, those are my tips for improved
energy. If you have any strategies or tips, let us
know in the comments below. Thanks for watching. Bye!
