10 habits that make adulthood feel less exhausting

adulthood has a very unique talent for turning even the smallest things into admin such as eating becomes meal planning, resting becomes sleep hygiene, friendship becomes scheduling and brushing your teeth somehow becomes part of a larger negotiation with your bathroom sink, your energy levels, and the version of yourself who once thought having a grown-up life would feel more elegant than this.

i have been thinking a lot about the habits that make life feel less heavy just the small, almost boring habits that gently remove friction from the day. the ones that make you feel slightly more held by your own life and do not ask you to become a better person by monday morning, but simply make monday morning less offensive. here are ten of them:

1. preparing for your low-energy self

high-energy you is ambitious, hydrated, making lists, adding chia seeds to things. low-energy you is standing in front of the fridge at 8:43 p.m. hoping dinner will emotionally reveal itself. adulthood becomes much less exhausting when you stop designing your life only for your most functional self. it can look like: keeping backup meals, repeat outfits, save default replies, have the same breakfast for a few weeks. make the easy option respectable enough that you do not end up punishing yourself every time your energy dips.

2. making your home easier to reset

a home does not need to be perfect to feel supportive, but it does need a few systems that do not collapse the second life gets busy. this can look like: a tray for the things that migrate around the house, a laundry basket where clothes actually land, a kitchen counter that gets cleared before bed, even badly. tiny reset points are underrated because they make the next version of you feel less immediately defeated. sometimes the most loving thing you can do for your future self is remove yesterday’s evidence before tomorrow begins.

3. upgrading the things you use every single day

a surprising amount of adulthood is just maintenance, which is why i’ve started paying more attention to the objects attached to my everyday routines. small annoyances feel louder when life is already busy, and honestly speaking of intentional mornings… most electric toothbrushes somehow manage to look both ugly and aggressively plastic while sitting on your bathroom sink for months.

i’ve been using the SURI toothbrush since more than a month now and what i like most is that it feels intentionally designed for real life. it’s minimal, lightweight, and the UV-cleaning case has genuinely made me feel better about not letting my toothbrush just sit exposed in a bathroom all day collecting whatever bathrooms collect. the battery also lasts longer than a month, which feels weirdly life-changing once adulthood becomes a constant cycle of charging everything you own. i also really appreciate that the heads are made from plant-based materials like cornstarch and castor oil instead of the usual petroleum-heavy plastics, because regular toothbrush heads create an absurd amount of waste over time. something about having a product that feels both visually calmer and slightly more thoughtful environmentally makes the routine itself feel better. tiny thing, but adulthood becomes less exhausting when the systems around you stop creating unnecessary friction.

4. keeping fewer things in motion

a lot of adult exhaustion comes from the mental weight of unfinished things. plans sitting in the group chat without a real answer, clothes waiting to be returned, emails reopened five times before replying, apps downloaded during an “i’m going to change my life” phase that now just stare back at you from the home screen like abandoned hobbies. life feels lighter when fewer things are asking for your attention in the background. one of the most underrated habits is learning to close loops instead of carrying them around for weeks pretending they are not draining you.

5. protecting the first ten minutes of the morning

the day feels different when your first act is not absorbing everybody else’s life through a glowing rectangle. even ten minutes before the internet can change the emotional texture of a morning. brush your teeth, drink water, open a window, make coffee, look at your own room before looking at the world. adulthood is already loud enough. there is no need to invite the entire internet into your nervous system before your face has fully woken up.

6. creating a “minimum version” of every routine

some examples of minimum versions looks like: a full skincare routine is lovely but washing your face and pairing it with an spf is enough, a long workout is wonderful but a walk around the block counts or a home-cooked dinner is great but eggs on toast can save the evening. 

adulthood becomes lighter when habits have a low-effort version, because consistency survives better when it has range. the goal is to stop making every useful habit so elaborate that it becomes impossible to maintain.

7. doing one boring thing before it becomes urgent

the problem with boring tasks is that they become emotionally expensive when ignored. the boring tasks for most of us typically looks like: booking the appointment, paying the bill, charging the device, restocking the toothpaste, replying to the email… none of these are exciting tasks, but they all become louder in the background when left alone. choosing one boring task a day is deeply unsexy and wildly effective. adulthood rewards people who reduce future panic in tiny increments.

8. turning convenience into a valid life strategy

convenience gets unfairly treated like laziness, when often it is just bandwidth protection. pre-cut vegetables and store it in the fridge, saved grocery lists, a standing appointment, an everyday bag that is already packed: these are not moral failures but the infrastructure of your personal lives. life is demanding enough without requiring every task to be artisanal.

9. having a closing ritual for the day

the day needs somewhere to land. an ideal evening looks like an evening routine with linen pyjamas and a candle named after a Scandinavian forest, although congratulations to anyone living that life. but in reality, creating just a signal that the work of the day is done… is enough. try putting your phone to charge outside the bed or writing one line in a notebook. the body understands repetition before the mind does.

10. maintaining yourself before you collapse

many of us wait until we are completely depleted before we take basic care seriously. then care becomes recovery, and recovery becomes another task we have to perform while already exhausted. the gentler habit is maintenance. small, regular, mundane-looking maintenance. the walk before the spiral, the meal before the headache or the life admin before it becomes a crisis.

that is why these tiny rituals matter more than they look like they should. they are making daily life less abrasive, de-cluttered and a little less dependent on heroic levels of discipline.

and if one of the small upgrades you want to make is your bathroom routine, i genuinely do recommend SURI, and so does my husband after using it for more than a month.

use my code COOKIES for 15% off. and from 18th may, the 4th anniversary sale will give you an extra 5% on top of the sale discount too.

thank you for supporting me to continue writing milk and cookies as always.