First off, hi! It’s been a hot second since we’ve posted to the blog—we hope you missed us! Following the busy fall travel season, I’m settling back into the comfy confines of the Wellness office for the winter, so you can look forward to more posts, podcasts, videos and news about our 2019 Wellness program to start cranking out of this site at a steady pace.
In October, one of our challenges was to share a favorite “Life Hack” with us. We defined Life Hack as any tip, trick, shortcut, skill, or process that increases your daily productivity and/or efficiency, or that helps you stay consistent with a healthy behavior or habit.
As usual, our MUS population did not disappoint, and we wanted to pass back the treasure-trove of good ideas you all provided. We’ll start with some big themes and popular responses, and then plan to delve even deeper on one of our next podcasts or subsequent posts.
First, there were two very popular answers, one having to do with exercise habits, and one having to do with nutrition.
- Exercise Habits: Laying out and/or packing the next day’s fitness outfit and footwear the night before. This eliminates the excuse of not having workout clothes, and is one less thing you have to do in the morning.
- Diet & Nutrition: Many variations of meal planning, food prep, and batch cooking, all in the name of making weekday meals easy and healthy. I’m betting Cristin might have some commentary on this soon.
Simple healthy habits like walking and drinking water also came up quite a bit. Cristin and I were very proud of these popular responses, as we are a big proponent of these and talk about them often. The following were some more specific life hacks that were shared. Pick a favorite from the list below and try it out for yourself!
- Take the stairs. Every time.
- Tell fitness instructors “See you next week” as you leave class. It adds accountability.
- Never eat straight out of a bag. Pre-portion what you want and put the bag away.
- Go to bed and wake up at the same time everyday (IPhone users, there is a function on your phone called Bedtime, which can help with this.)
- Stretch in the shower.
- Take a campus stroll when stress gets too high.
- Make a daily To-Do list at the end of the day for the following day, so you come into the office focused.
- Start off the day with gratitude.
- Keep sweets out of the house.
- Set up automatic bill pay.
- If I notice I am getting distracted, I get up and stretch, take a short walk, or work on something more physical.
- Keep a journal.
- I recently started throwing a load of laundry in the washer as soon as I wake up in the morning. It’s ready to toss in the dryer when I leave for work…and then I’m not spending my precious evening hours dealing with laundry (or forgetting to dry it).
Great ideas! We’ll stop there to let those sink in for now, but we promise to share more soon!
Be well,
Neal
