I want to incorporate listening to news podcasts into my morning routine. I usually don’t listen to anything when I get ready in the morning so I want to use that time to get caught up on what is going on in the world.
Sunday 1/15
I was on a trip with friends on Sunday and was not in my usual apartment environment. This made it harder to start my day with my usual morning routine. Instead of having the morning to myself, I talked to friends as we got ready for the day. As a result, I didn’t have this normal chunk of time to listen to a podcast. After we drove home, however, I had to unpack my things and decided to listen to a news podcast as I unpacked since I missed it in the morning.
Monday 1/16
During my morning routine on Monday, I started listening to a morning news podcast that focused on the current economic crisis in Sri Lanka. I could only listen to a few minutes of the podcast before I found that listening to how dire conditions of the country are put me in an anxious and upset mood first thing in the morning. Throughout the rest of the day, even when I had free time when I could’ve been listening to this podcast, I found that I didn’t want to go back to listening.
Tuesday 1/17
I woke up early on Tuesday and went straight to go on a walk around Lake Lag with a friend. As a result, I didn’t have a dedicated block of time to do my morning routine and didn’t listen to a podcast before leaving for this walk. After I came back from my walk, I wanted to make myself breakfast and thought that it would be a good time to listen to a few podcasts. I found that I was more able to listen to the news towards the late morning once my day had already gotten started. Listening to upsetting news later in my morning didn’t have as much of a disruption on my mood than listening to news when I first wake up.
Going forward, I think that I would be more successful if I listened to news podcasts later in the day while doing mindless activities instead of trying to stick with listening to them first thing in the morning. There is also an interesting relationship between mood and how busy I am throughout the day, which results in conflicting effects towards my ability/desire to listen to a podcast. While morning social plans makes it logistically harder for me to listen to podcasts in the morning, it also puts me in a better mood that results in me taking more time to do fun/relaxing events when I can then listen to a news podcast.
