my productive routine in Dubai

Good morning, my people! Today, I thought, let me take you through my morning routine that I've been doing for a while, and that really works for me. I feel like this is like the only morning routine that actually works for me. Good morning! It's 8:30; it's wake-up time.

So, the first thing that I do while I'm in bed is to open the curtain so that I get sunlight, yeah, and actually wake up. Can't even see that it's so bright! This is so… [Music] bright. This is so… is a workout. I swear to God! Honestly, after I wake up, I straight go to the bathroom and I weigh myself every single day. That's actually really important.

The scale that I use is this Withings scale. The reason why I do this is so I can track my weight and also my body fat percentage. The great thing about the Withings is that it kind of connects with your phone and has an app that shows the last 7-day average of your weight and body fat percentage. You also get like a notification of like either you’re gaining fat or like you’re gaining muscle or losing weight or something like that.

Basically, it gives you insight into how your body is changing. I feel like it's really good because most of the time, you know, when you hop on a scale, you think like, "Oh my God, I gained weight today!" But it's not like that. You've got to look at the weekly average. If you're doing it on your own, it could be like, “I'm lazy,” so I don't do that. But if the app is doing it for me and I can see my weight and body fat fluctuations, that's a good thing, especially because I lift.

You know, directly looking at body weight is not that helpful for me; I get to look at the body fat percentage. So, let me weigh myself. How I weigh myself is at first, I pee, and then I weigh myself completely naked, okay?

So, it just seems like I'm losing body fat, which is a good thing. I'm currently around like 25.5% body fat. I used to be at 19 to 21, I think around like March or April, that time when I was most lean and a little jacked. Not jacked, I would say I was most lean and I have muscle, but probably I have more muscle now. I just also have fat right now covering that.

Basically, what I want to get at is I want to get around 22%. I feel like 19 to 20 was actually quite hard to sustain; I had to really watch out for what I was eating and I was trying to make sure that I get my weightlifting sessions done as well as my cardio. It requires a lot of discipline. Even though I think it looks good, it's just quite difficult.

I know what my body looks like in each fat percentage, and now I want 22%. It's a good range where I look like I work out consistently, but at the same time, it's not that hard to sustain for me personally.

[Music] Some people find this weird, but even if I'm staying at home, I like to put on some perfume every single day because I like perfumes a lot. Today, I feel like this—this is Amage Sunshine. Amage is a perfume brand from Oman, and actually, I think the royal family, maybe even the king of Oman, kind of asked to create a perfume brand to represent Oman.

It's a luxury, kind of like a niche perfume brand, and the depth of their perfumes is so good. When I went to their store, I just bought two, even though it’s expensive as hell. But I think it’s worth every single penny that you will spend because it lasts forever, it smells so good, and it smells so different than any other perfume brands out there. This one, their Sunshine, is literally how I would describe sunshine. It's full of energy, but it's sweet, and it just makes you feel positive, and that's how I feel today.

So, I'm going to apply this one after doing my skincare. It’s time for breakfast. Oh, to reduce decision fatigue, I basically listed down the food that I can cook. So for breakfast, we have four options, and today I feel like I'm going to go with yogurt, granola, and chia seeds.

Okay, so I'm going to take my chia seeds. One tablespoon is usually how much I eat, and then I'm going to add water so that this will kind of absorb the water and get like a jelly consistency. It's really nice when you add that to the yogurt because it feels like it’s pudding. I think it’s like what they call chia pudding, I guess.

So, you add a little bit of water and then you mix this so that the chia absorbs it. This is how I like to eat it, and it's really good for your health. It's good for your digestion; it's good for your gut health. I'm just going to leave it like that so that it will soak up water.

Meanwhile, I will need to figure out this mess. So usually, you know at night before I go to bed, I have little to zero self-control, so I clean the dishes in the morning. I basically rinse them and put them into the dishwasher, and that’s just something that I do in the morning. I realized it works better for me that way.

No matter what I eat for my breakfast, I always have a cup of Turkish coffee. It's one of my favorite types of coffee. It’s not the coffee bean, but it's about how we brew it. I like it so much that I literally bought a Turkish coffee machine from Turkey and brought it back. Let me show you how I'm going to make it.

So first, you get yourself a Turkish coffee; it's ground for Turkish coffee. Basically, I have various Turkish coffee brands in my house because I like trying them out, and then I'm going to put two teaspoons into it, and then you put it—that’s it.

It's like now making my coffee. You can also make it at home without the machine with a cezve, what we call it, but I think it’s a little difficult to get the taste right. With a Turkish coffee machine, you know you get a good Turkish coffee every single freaking time super easily.

Okay, we should have probably had like more bubbles on top of it, but this will do its thing. It's fine. Another thing that I drink in the morning is this kombucha powder combined with my creatine. I take both of them every day, so I won’t forget.

I mean, I go to South Korea two or sometimes three times per year. You know, every time I go to Japan, I also go to South Korea. I just sold this thing in Lotte Mart; actually, my mom bought it, and it’s so good! I'm not sponsored or anything; it just tastes good.

It has vitamin C in it, it has like kombucha, things like that. What else? Yeah, it just basically has a lot of probiotics in it, and I love this. It has really helped with my digestion overall, so I'm going to definitely buy this again. If you're Korean, you’ve got to get this, man! This is so good.

My creatine mix—I'm going to add ice in it. I know like in Chinese medicine, everything that's cold that you put in your body is basically not good, and I think in Chinese medicine they think that it causes menstrual cramps and headaches and things like that. I feel like that might be true because I always drink water ice cold, and I always suffer from my cramps.

So maybe I should listen to my Chinese friends and stop doing this, but the cold water tastes so good! Ah, tastes so good! I always like to eat my breakfast on my balcony because I can get sunlight. That just resets your circadian rhythm and makes you more awake overall without stimulating yourself like with tons of coffee.

I mean, this is a small portion of coffee, so I think it's fine. But oh dang! One thing I like about Dubai is that it's always sunny, so I'm much less likely to get depressed here. Ah, good morning! While I'm eating my breakfast, I love everything.

I eat to make sure I'm hitting my proteins because I'm trying to lose body fat right now and I'm kind of cutting. I try to ensure that I'm not cutting intensely. Yes, I am looking for a caloric deficit, but I'm not trying to go super hard because I want to kind of transform my body in 3 to 6 months. I'm not rushing, so I'm just taking a slow approach.

I always look for my calories and also my proteins, and I also make sure that I get micronutrients. Like, I look at the vitamins and minerals that I also get, and I also look at, you know, iron and magnesium and vitamin C, etc., etc., too. Because I just realized that I like certain types of food and I always lack magnesium, vitamin D, and iron.

So, I make sure to look at that. I try to get that from food as much as I can, and if I can't get it, I take a supplement. By doing that, you know, not obsessing over calories but trying to maintain my health is the main focus when it comes to tracking my calories, and it just helps me so much.

You know, people say like intuitively eating, etc., etc., but with my ADHD self, I don't have intuition. I'm just like running on impulsivity; what are you talking about? Now it's time for us to get some admin work done, which means I basically start my day by going through all my social media platforms and also like Instagram DMs, iMessage, WhatsApp—every single messaging app that I use to reply to people.

Because I get a lot of messages every single day from my friends, from people I know, and from the people that I work with, so I just need to take a block to reply to everyone. One thing that I recognized in the past is that when I don't do this, the messages kind of build up over time and I get overwhelmed.

Then I end up replying to no one! The first thing I do is I go to my YouTube Community. I haven't announced this on my main channel yet, actually, but I have started a YouTube Community where you get access to a lifetime course and it's a 12-month membership.

We have monthly Q&As for the light package, where you can ask me questions and get feedback about your YouTube strategy, YouTube videos, etc., etc. For the pro package, you get like four one-on-one sessions with me that you can book anytime in the next 12 months, basically.

So I go to the community and see whether any of my students have messaged me, asked any questions, or asked for any feedback, and I reply to them. That is the first thing that I do. The second thing that I do is go through my Slack, which is the platform that I use to communicate with my team and the people I work with.

You know, I talk with my editors from there, and I also talk with my brand partnership manager there. I talk with Tommy, who is helping me with marketing and copywriting, etc. So, I just check Slack, and then I go to WhatsApp to check all the messages that I got from various people, various friends, and then iMessage and then Instagram DMs.

This is just like a daily flow that I have, and just having this block in the morning has made me so much less overwhelmed, if that makes sense. You know, if you're getting a lot of messages, you probably can relate to this—where you know, the faster you reply, the more messages and emails you start to get.

So, it’s quite necessary to have a block of time where you reply to everyone. Because if that’s not the time of the day, then you're not going to reply, and it just gives so much clarity and peace, in my opinion. I personally really love this approach because otherwise, I just don't reply to anyone and I ghost people for weeks and weeks, and I feel bad about myself.

It's not good; I don't want to feel bad about myself, neither do I want to disrespect people unintentionally. So, it’s been working very well for me; I highly recommend it if you're struggling to reply to everyone.

Oh, it literally took me more than an hour to go through all the messages and old emails that I have—sometimes it makes me really overwhelmed.

Let me show you a glimpse of my calendar; isn't it crazy? Now that I finished replying to everyone, what I do every morning is that I go for a morning run—not morning run, morning walk! What am I talking about?

Basically, it’s not even morning anymore because it took me such a long time to reply to everyone, but I just go outside and get some sunlight. Meanwhile, I call my mom. I go for a walk every day about 1 to 2 times per day because I’m sitting all day here, so I'm quite sedentary, and I want to make sure that I'm getting the steps in.

I have a really good relationship with my family overall, so I call everyone. You know, I call my grandma every day, I call my mom every day, and I chat with my friends. I call them too.

So, to make things effective and also healthy but also maintain my social relationships, what I do is that I call everyone when I'm on a walk. I'm not a chatty girl; I’m not a text person. I hate text messages!

It's just the conversation is shallow and like you can't do anything while you're texting other than maybe walking, but that’s also dangerous. So, I like to call everyone while I go for a walk, so it’s like two birds with one stone—at one stone, whatever you call it.

It’s super sunny outside; I’m excited to go. Before I go for my morning walk and talk with my mom, I turn this thing on. This basically vacuums and also mops and cleans. It mops automatically on its own and it also dries its own mop.

All you need to do is put in water and then also take out the dirty water. It has been a game changer for me because I freaking hate cleaning! I just freaking hate all the house works. So, it’s very convenient that there are tools that allow you to automatically do that.

You can also set a schedule so that you don’t have to worry about when it’s going to clean every day and whether you forgot to turn it on. But because my schedule fluctuates, and even though I have the same routine most days, it takes longer for me to get that done. Some days, I’m just faster, more energetic, and I just set it manually.

Also, sorry for my ugly red socks, but you know when I’m just walking around my neighborhood, the last thing I can care about is probably how I look. I sometimes come across you guys and I look ugly as…

Calling her—I don't know, maybe because I grew up in Istanbul—but seeing the sea or some sort of water just makes me feel so calm, and it just takes all my overwhelming thoughts and feelings away from my head.

I know it has an effect on most people, but it’s more like if I don’t see the sea or a body of water for a long time, I just feel so stuck in the city. One of the reasons why I decided to move here to Dubai is because of this view.

I think it's just a necessity for me personally, and I love it here. I came back from my walk and now I'm just going to make myself a cup of another Turkish coffee and grab a date, and then I'm just going to start my whole day—like actual working, deep work sessions.

That's basically how I spend my mornings in Dubai. What do you think? I don't know, this morning walk thing has been working for me in a really good way, especially because I can also call my mom and talk with her in the morning.

That just energizes me, and this flow is probably the only morning routine that works for me. It’s more like how I spend the first quarter of my day instead of maybe a work morning routine—a traditional morning routine. But let me know, you guys.

If you're struggling with depression, I highly recommend going for a morning walk. Even if it’s cloudy or maybe rainy, it’s still good to go outside in the morning and get a good walk. Thank you for watching and see you soon!