I no longer use social media before classes – easier said than done right? Wrong!
I know I am not a typical college student. I grew up in the same town as my university so I live at home, about 40 minutes away from campus. Somehow the scheduling gods were always against me, and I have had 8ams every semester since I started college. Now the 40 minute trip plus allowing time to get ready, eat breakfast, drink coffee, and walk to class, I found myself getting up at 5:30 am every morning. I quickly fell into a habit of waking up, getting ready as soon as I could, and sitting on Instagram, Tik Tok, Snapchat and even occasionally YouTube until it was 7am and time to leave. And oftentimes, I found myself just as groggy as I was when I first woke up and fighting to stay awake in class. My solution to actually waking up and being ready for my day: stop the mindless scrolling! I now typically don’t use social media until sometime after 12, almost seven hours after I wake up. The way I weaned myself off of the mindless scrolling: more fulfilling tasks and allowing exceptions!
My typical morning looks like this: wake up around 5:30, brush my teeth, get dressed, make morning coffee, journal for about 15 minutes, put on makeup, get breakfast, make a game plan of what I need to do that day, call my boyfriend to tell him good morning before he goes to work, pack my backpack, and finally leave the house. I actually take the time to look over the items I need to get done that day and the events I need to prepare myself for. And if I have any time leftover, I typically like to read for a couple minutes before I have to leave for school. This routine adds more rewarding and fulfilling tasks that prepare me for the day. Not only that, but I am actually awake and ready for class.
If you are going to take away anything from this article, let it be this: give yourself some wriggle room! I still get on snapchat in the morning to send snaps back to my friends and boyfriend. I still get on Instagram if someone has sent me a reel (usually between my Dad and my Mom, I have about 6 Instagram reels waiting to be watched when I wake up). But the moment I want to click on the explore feed page, I get off my phone. Nonetheless, there are days that I have everything done and still have too much time to kill. And all I want to do during that time is mindlessly scroll through Instagram. Instead, I open up Pinterest! This app is such an easy way to scroll but still get something out of it besides just filling time. I usually take that few extra minutes to scroll through Pinterest to find a dinner recipe to cook with my boyfriend, a new crochet project to add to my never-ending list, or even motivational quotes to get my day going.
If you’ve been looking for a way to cut down on your screen time or wanting to take a social media cleanse, try just taking your mornings without social media and use that time to prepare yourself for the day to come. Just that one hour with focusing on myself and the coming day has made a world of difference in my life.