Redeveloping Solid Wellness Routines

In early January, at one of my first therapy sessions of the New Year, I admitted that after the holidays I hadn’t been sleeping…again. Whenever my anxiety flares up, the first thing that goes out the window for me is sleep. An 11pm bedtime quickly (and unwillingly) turns into a bedtime of  1am, 3am…you get it.

Have you ever tried to function on zero sleep? I’m sure you have, at some point or another, and you know that it sucks.

January was a stellar month in a lot of ways. I got a new job offer that I’m super excited about and had one of my most consistent and successful months on YouTube. I reached and surpassed 2,000 followers on Instagram and got a pretty awesome byline.

I was reflecting on all of this during a coaching session, where I once again had to admit that I still wasn’t sleeping. And I basically felt so emotionally burned out that I was just going through the motions every day.

It was after that session that I made the choice to get very clear on what wellness looks like for me. Because professionally, I was killing it. But mentally and physically? I was dying.

The first thing I knew I had to tackle was the sleep thing. Part of what keeps me awake is absolutely anxiety and overwhelm. So controlling how much I was taking on at a time was a big step.

I decided to back to an old method of goal/wellness/habit tracking that worked really well for me years ago. It’s called the DWM method or: daily, weekly, monthly. 

The idea is that you assign habits, tasks or goals to each category that all add up to whole, happy and healthy version of yourself. It helps you prioritize your wellness as much as you do your work, because it implies you need both in order to truly be productive and effective (which you absolutely do).

I’ve written about this method before and it really works!

To break things down:

Dailies should be health, wellness and productivity focused tasks that you need or want to hit every single day. They aren’t big, long term projects like writing a book, but they help to sustain you so that you can hit those bigger goals. Keep them simple, intentional and realistic.

Weeklies are a mix of tasks and habits that either need less frequent attention or smaller segments of big projects that work towards the whole.

Monthlies are even more long term than weeklies are are more likely to be infrequent, but still impactful, wellness habits and tasks.

Here’s my current DWM flow:

Daily:

• Drink 125oz of water
• Get in bed by 9:15 (no screens!)
• Read
• Journal/Read Devotional
• Engage wit other creators (blog comments, YouTube comments, etc)
• Take vitamins!

Weekly:

• Yoga 1-2 times a week
• Upload 2 new YouTube videos
• 2-4 new blog posts
• 2-3 meat free meals
• Make it to church and small group meeting
• Call both parents
• Spend 2 hours on my writing project

Monthly:

• Get a manicure!
• Re-read everything you’ve written (for that writing project) and outline what’s next
• Set up bullet journal
• 1-2 IRL coffee meetings
• Set up monthly budget and savings goals

Seems pretty simple, because it is, but it definitely makes a difference. Using a bullet journal is a great way to track these things. You can throw them onto a habit tracker (divided by daily, weekly, monthly) or just include them in your daily, weekly and monthly set ups!

These can be the same every month or adjust based on what you need.

If you’re looking to really set up some good wellness habits, give this model a try. I like it because it seems much more attainable than just making a list of super goals that you probably won’t accomplish.

You can also take this model and apply it to way more than wellness! Your work goals, home, life, relationship…anything really. Break it down and see if that helps you get to where you want to be.