“I think a lunch with a friend is a great way to keep connection with those that are important to you and that keep you balanced,”.
The key is to schedule a time to connect with the people that bring you joy, even if you hop on a video call or chat on the phone.
Maintaining the positive relationships in your life can increase your overall happiness and help you a longer life, according to an 86-year-long Harvard study that’s still ongoing.
It can be difficult to get an adequate amount of good quality sleep each night, especially during busier periods of your month.
“Having a day where you focus on getting a full night’s sleep, taking a nap if you need it, would certainly be another one that I would add in,”
“I feel like oftentimes we schedule our month or our week or our lives, and we forget about sleep.”
It may seem as if prioritizing work over sleep can help you be more productive, but the opposite is true. You must get enough sleep to reach peak levels of physical and mental health, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Having time to yourself is extremely important – And if you can devote a full day to yourself, that would be beneficial for your mental health.
Though “having a full day to yourself can sometimes be challenging, and so that might need to be broken up,”
Maybe start by “having a morning to yourself, an afternoon to yourself [or] an evening to yourself so that you can reconnect and do the things that you find enjoyable, or the things that you need to refresh and be renewed.”
You can use the day to practice self-care, tap into your hobbies or visit somewhere new.
Disconnecting, especially from social media, can allow the time and space for you to connect more deeply with yourself.
“I think 24 hours of no social media can be incredibly helpful,” experts suggest.
Many phones allow you to set time restrictions on your apps. Start by limiting how many hours you spend on apps like Instagram and TikTok.
“The other day that I would add to this list would be an unscheduled day, like a day where you can just do whatever you need to do,”
A day without a routine or the impulse to stick to a schedule can be a refreshing way to relax and slow down in a fast-paced environment.
“It might be like a day of cleaning, it may be a day of connecting [or] it may be a day of running errands. It could be whatever it needs to be,” . “Sometimes you just need to schedule nothing for a day, just because things can be so busy.”
