Winter in New York City can sometimes feel like a time for hibernation, but I've learned to stop wasting the winter and make the most of it. In this video, I share my NYC winter routine that keeps me productive, motivated, and in a positive mindset even during the coldest months of the year.
From staying active despite the weather to planning productive days in the heart of the city, I’ll take you through my winter habits that turned my seasonal slump into a time of growth. Winter health tips, time management, and how I make the most of every moment are all part of the plan.
Whether you're in New York or anywhere else, these tips will help you achieve your goals and embrace the winter season like never before.
🌟 Stay motivated: Learn how I focus on self-improvement during the winter months and stop procrastinating.
➤ Like, comment, and subscribe for more tips on how to live your best life in NYC this winter!
#NYCWinterRoutine
#WinterMotivation
#ProductivityTips
#WinterInNYC
#NYCLifestyle
#StopWastingTime
#WinterGoals
#SelfImprovement
#ProductiveWinter
#NYC2025
#WinterHealthTips
#DailyRoutineNYC
#NYC Winter Routine
#Winter Productivity
#NYC Lifestyle 2025
#Personal Growth NYC
#Winter Motivation
#Daily Routine NYC
#Winter Health Tips
#NYC Living Tips
#Overcoming Winter Slump
#Maximize Winter Productivity
From staying active despite the weather to planning productive days in the heart of the city, I’ll take you through my winter habits that turned my seasonal slump into a time of growth. Winter health tips, time management, and how I make the most of every moment are all part of the plan.
Whether you're in New York or anywhere else, these tips will help you achieve your goals and embrace the winter season like never before.
🌟 Stay motivated: Learn how I focus on self-improvement during the winter months and stop procrastinating.
➤ Like, comment, and subscribe for more tips on how to live your best life in NYC this winter!
#NYCWinterRoutine
#WinterMotivation
#ProductivityTips
#WinterInNYC
#NYCLifestyle
#StopWastingTime
#WinterGoals
#SelfImprovement
#ProductiveWinter
#NYC2025
#WinterHealthTips
#DailyRoutineNYC
#NYC Winter Routine
#Winter Productivity
#NYC Lifestyle 2025
#Personal Growth NYC
#Winter Motivation
#Daily Routine NYC
#Winter Health Tips
#NYC Living Tips
#Overcoming Winter Slump
#Maximize Winter Productivity
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00Hello, this is Taylor. This is my fourth winter in New York City, and pretty much every winter
00:06before this one, I kind of just hibernated and waited it out until the first signs of
00:11spring rolled around. But a few weeks ago, I noticed this winter feels different. It's my
00:17coldest one yet, but I'm weirdly enjoying it. So I asked myself why, and I figured out exactly
00:24what I'm doing differently to stop wasting my winter. So let's dive into these changes,
00:29and I bet that some of them might help you too. Okay, this first section of habits, I am poetically
00:36naming Chasing Sunlight, Making Peace with Early Darkness. So let's lay some foundation for the rest
00:42of these habits by addressing the elephant in the room, the thing that I think we all hate the most
00:47about winter. It gets dark so early. And if you live even further north than New York City, I feel for
00:53you. So my first big change was so simple, but extremely effective, and it kind of happened on
00:59accident. I started chasing those precious hours of sunlight by shifting my entire schedule earlier.
01:06And by waking up considerably earlier than I did last winter, I've gained back about 10 hours of
01:11sunlight every week. To put numbers to it, this time last year, I was waking up at 9.30, 10. I'm a total
01:17night owl by nature. I was also working a lot later into the evening last year. But these days, I'm waking
01:22up between 7.30 and 8.30, which is early for me, if you know me. I was even waking up a little bit
01:27earlier than that for a while, but 7.30 to 8.30 is what I've kind of settled at. The way that I
01:32transitioned earlier kind of happened on accident. So whenever I fly west, I really enjoy taking
01:38advantage of that jet lag and going to bed earlier and waking up earlier. And after doing that enough
01:42times over the years, usually going home to California for holidays to visit my parents or what
01:46have you, I just kind of noticed that I really liked the feeling of shifting things a bit earlier than I was
01:51used to. And after a recent trip from Lisbon, Portugal, back to New York just a couple months
01:55ago, it just stuck. Okay, but here's the real game changer with this new habit. It's not just about
02:01getting back sunlight. This new habit has pretty much completely eliminated those depressing winter
02:08blues I used to feel from waking up kind of late and then feeling like I'd wasted an entire day when
02:13the sun sets at 5 p.m. Now when the sun goes down early, I'm kind of okay with it because I woke up
02:18early and had finished most of my work by that point. This schedule shift also includes earlier
02:22dinners, earlier weekend plans, and earlier bedtime. In a way, it feels like the best time
02:27for rest and recovery where I'm using winter's natural slowdown of pace as an opportunity to get
02:34plenty of rest and time to rejuvenate. Since in the summer, I'm just always on the go, always outside,
02:39jumping between plans, getting late dinners, going to bed late. And I also see it as a great time to
02:44invest in future me from a business perspective. For example, I'm going through the process of
02:48hiring a video editor now, so that way the ramp up training period happens before the travel plans
02:54and faster pace that comes with spring and summer. So to conclude, instead of dreading early darkness
02:59like I used to, I now see it as an opportunity to start things earlier and now I look forward to my
03:05evening routine. I swear it actually feels luxurious, like I'm allowing myself to stop working at an early
03:11hour. Okay, so this schedule shift has created a strong foundation for me to now fill in the gaps
03:16with activities and plans and rituals. Which brings us to what is probably my favorite section of this
03:22video, anticipation architecture, design days you actually look forward to. I'm making these titles
03:29sound so pretentious. So there's some really great neuroscience studies showing that dopamine, which is
03:34often referred to as the pleasure neurotransmitter, spikes even more in humans during the
03:40anticipation of a reward than during receiving the reward itself. And this explains why the buildup
03:46to big special events like Christmas or a vacation often feel more exciting than the event itself. So
03:52something I've done is effectively hack my brain's reward system by creating a very specific winter
03:59ritual that I seriously look forward to every week. Fair warning, my ritual is kind of hard-o biohacking
04:06fitness girly Andrew Huberman coded. But I'll tell you what it is anyway, and then you can design your
04:10own winter ritual. So about a month ago, without much planning, a friend and I pretty spontaneously
04:15decided to go on a run together. Now it was freezing outside, but we were like, screw it, we'll wear gloves,
04:21we'll warm up pretty quickly from running, it'll be fun. I was a little nervous though, I'm not gonna lie.
04:25I am pretty good with high intensity interval training workouts and strength training, but endurance-based
04:31cardio workouts I'm not as good at, and historically have just not enjoyed as much as a result. But I knew
04:36my friend wouldn't mind going kind of slow with me, and it was just a fun active thing to do together,
04:41so we went for it. Fast forward an hour, the run is over, and yeah it was challenging, but it was supposed
04:46to be, and I felt so good. I had a pep in my step. Then we were like, you know what sounds really good
04:52right now? A smoothie. So we extended our run to the grocery store to pick up ingredients, went home,
04:58and made this healthy protein green smoothie, which also tasted good. What we did next will blow your
05:03mind. See, this friend of mine has a steam shower. We turn it on and sit in the 120 degree steam room
05:09for about 20 minutes. So nice. And then we take our respective showers after that. Fast forward a couple
05:14hours, we then bundle up and walk to a cozy nearby Thai restaurant and have a delicious meal, followed by
05:21a cozy movie night inside. By the end of the day, we were like, wait, that was kind of the perfect
05:27Sunday. Five weeks later, we have done the same exact routine every single Sunday, and I'm telling
05:32you, it'll be a Tuesday, and I will be looking forward to my Sunday. So I don't tell you this
05:36just to brag about my healthy biohacky luxurious Sunday routine, or the fact that I have a friend
05:42with a steam shower, but rather to highlight that the anticipation of this delightful new winter day
05:47that we designed has created this positive feedback loop that's helped me combat the hibernation
05:53winter blues. I look forward to it all week. And then the routine itself is also very healthy. So I
05:58actually have the endorphins and all of the other happy hormones afterwards. It just sets me up for a
06:03great week, kind of the opposite of Sunday scaries. So to bring this all back down to earth for a sec,
06:07I would seriously recommend designing some winter day ritual that you can look forward to every week.
06:14If the run plus green smoothie isn't your thing, maybe it's a weekly coffee shop hang with friends,
06:18followed by an enriching indoor activity, like going to an art gallery or a museum or something
06:23much chiller and by yourself, like a morning coffee and pastry run, followed by a little walk in your
06:30favorite park and then back home to read your book for an hour on the couch, whatever floats your boat.
06:35And then I think we can also apply this on the micro level, designing little habits here and there
06:40that bring you some anticipation joy and real time joy. Anyways, all of this, of course, applies to all
06:45seasons, but I have found it especially helpful in the winter where I could use those extra little
06:50nudges here and there to feel happy and energized. In conclusion, hack your brain's reward system and
06:55design days and rituals that you actually look forward to. I'm telling you, it makes winter a lot
07:00more enjoyable. Now, a bit of a change from my hard-o Sunday ritual. This would not be a video about my
07:06New York City winter routine if we didn't talk cozy core, intentional indoor living. The silver lining of
07:12it being freezing outside is the guilt-free excuse to do plenty of things indoors. But instead of just
07:18rotting in bed or doom scrolling on your phone all day, we're talking intentional, gratifying indoor
07:24activities. So something I've started doing a lot more this winter is trading Uber Eats and doom
07:28scrolling for home-cooked meals and movie nights. Again, in comparison to summer where I'm eating out
07:34so many meals because it's just a joy to be outside, meeting up with friends, having a beer on the patio,
07:39I'm now planning nights where I cook at home, either by myself or with someone else. And something
07:44that's made this a lot more fun is to follow new recipes or use new ingredients instead of just
07:49cooking my same old, same old. My friend and I cooked this one this past weekend. We added pasta
07:54and butter to it. It was delicious. A little garbanzo bean heavy, but delish. Then we watched a movie and
08:00it was just a delightful, cozy weekend night. Okay, in addition to the cooking movie nights, I've talked
08:06before about having a cozy home environment with warm, diffused lights instead of cool overhead
08:11lights. But I think it's all the more important to have a really luxurious nighttime routine that you
08:17really look forward to in the winter because it gets dark early so you might as well enjoy it. My
08:22nighttime routine is dimming my lights, taking a warm shower, brushing my teeth and skincare, getting in
08:28bed and reading for 20 to 45 minutes before sleeping. I also do not mess around with skincare in the
08:33winter. I shamelessly bring Aquaphor or Vaseline everywhere to take care of chapped lips, dry hands
08:39or what have you. I also lather it on the floor bed as needed. Game changer. Now, as for balancing
08:44social life with indoor activities, I definitely still do a mix of both. So when I'm not cooking at
08:50home and I'm meeting friends out for dinner, I try to choose a restaurant that has warm, cozy vibes
08:55and soup or pho I love to have in the winter. It just warms up my innards. I think you get the idea.
09:00A lot of this is really just accepting that it's cold and dark outside and leaning in and just making
09:06the most of it. So it's actually exciting. So this has been a really enjoyable change to make indoor
09:10activities in the winter feel special rather than restrictive. Okay, this section might sound a little
09:16too on the nose, but I'd be remiss to not include it in a video about my New York City winter routine. This
09:21section is called Winter Warrior Physical Adaptation. I'm having a lot of fun with these titles. There is a
09:28reason I still city bike everywhere, even when the weather looks like this. I took this picture.
09:33There is a reason why I still get 10,000 steps or more every single day, even when we got this going
09:39on. I also took this picture last week. It's because there is no such thing as bad weather,
09:45only unsuitable clothing. I'm not just going to say to wear a big jacket, although that is a seriously
09:50good place to start. But the game changer of proper winter gear literally enables you to maintain
09:57most of your fall, spring, and summer habits. And for me, in New York specifically, a huge appeal of
10:03this city is that it is so incredibly walkable. I walk everywhere. And if I don't walk, then I city
10:09bike. And if I don't bike, then I take the subway. Uber is a last resort unless it's late and it's for
10:14safety or time-saving convenience. So the idea that I would spend a whole season not enjoying the
10:20walkability is a no-go. So yes, starting with a proper winter jacket. I absolutely love mine.
10:26It's Patagonia. I think 800 fill goose down. It might be a thousand. Is that a thing? I don't know.
10:31I'll check. Worth every penny and pretty much a force field to any temperature that New York City
10:36gets. This definitely was a splurge, but of course there are lots of amazing options that are more
10:40affordable. And on the coldest days, I will double up with a mid-layer underneath, but that's mainly
10:45because I'm a big baby with cold temperatures. I'm from Southern California. Sue me.
10:49Then the double layering leggings has also been a game changer, especially for biking. I wear these
10:56fleece-lined leggings underneath my jeans. I'll link everything below, by the way. And sometimes
11:00even my Lululemon leggings. Really, any other insulating layer will help. And then, of course,
11:05warm gloves, especially while biking since our extremities get cold so quickly. And fleece-lined
11:10beanies and scarves, I've been doing a lot more. Fun fact, heat loss happens evenly across exposed skin.
11:16So the key is really to just cover your entire body. Now, yes, I totally admit that I live in New
11:22York City. It's concrete. They salt the streets. I will never be in a situation here where I'm walking
11:28in knee-deep snow. And so if you live in the tundra, there are probably some safety precautions
11:33you might want to consider that I'm not considering. I'm not an expert on them, but you probably are
11:37because you live in that environment. But my point stands. Dress appropriately. I know this was probably
11:41the most obvious winter tip I could have given you to bundle up, but I've been doing it a lot
11:47better this year. And taking that extra annoying minute to seriously prepare every single time I go
11:53outside, it's been totally worth it to maintain an active lifestyle and to just enjoy the winter more.
11:58Let me know what your winter hacks are in the comments below. I will read every single one. And
12:02also, sorry to the Southern Hemisphere viewers, you can come back and watch this in six months. So that
12:07is my New York City winter routine and the new habits that I have implemented to stop hibernating
12:13and wasting my winter. Hit the thumbs up if you enjoyed and subscribe for more. And until next time,
12:18Turtle out.
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