I've got to hand it to myself, despite having been back in the UK and pretty much settled for just over one month now, I'm still managing to stay in 'party-mode' and have around a 60% fail rate on getting back into my healthy habits of old.
Just about the only thing I've succeeded in doing, and that only just this last week is getting back to three runs a week - which is necessary given the sheer amount of food and beer I've been consuming!
I've also done a fair amount of walking as part of my usual daily routine, but even that needs i think a bit more discipline on my part to keep it up!
How long per day I need to devote to 'good habits'
Obviously one should aim for 'right effort' constantly, but here what I mean by 'good habits' is more daily tasks outside of work - and I want to work for 7.5 hours a day (including breaks!) - and I want to do the following outside of work most days:
- Run or walk for 90 mins (includes showering) - 3 DECENT runs a week and one long walk a week is what I want to aim for.
- Cooking decent food - 60 mins - enough time to cook a quick decent lunch and dinner
- Cleaning and Tidying - 30 mins
- Life chores - 30 mins (tidying might bleed into this) - the above two should be enough time to cover the basics
- Yoga - 30 mins
- Meditation - 30 mins.... the final two are overlapping - meditation can be movement based!
That's 4.5 hours in total which kind of surprised me TBH as the above really is what I regard as a minimum to maintain a decent quality of mind.
When is the best time....?
Doing a little spreadsheet helped here...
I'm thinking I prefer the second split schedule - of some chores in the morning, then work, then some more chores straight after...
So for example I might get up and run in the morning then do some basic chores and meditate and then in the evening cooking and food shopping and tidying and yoga, not necessarily in that order.
But knowing that I need like 4.5 hours on a typical day helps.
The slightly depressing thing is this only leaves me 2 hours a day for 'chill time'.
But at least I know I have to either take time out of work or not run or let the house get dirty if I want to chill more.
And of course there's always those weekend days when there is no work for chill!
Quality not just quantity
Another crucial factor is quality - I can reduce time a little by tidying harder for example or some days will be interval training which is really only an hour all-in.
But the important thing is to get the hours in for me ATM!