My Digital Minimalist Morning: Simple Routine for 2026
Want a few easy steps to bring more human and less social media into your life? Try the routine that helped me when I was too depressed to get out of bed.
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Sophia Chang (00:00)
Welcome to the Sophia Chang Show.
A 2026 resolution to break? I have one for you.
A few episodes ago, I was talking about the rise of digital minimalist influencers. I'm going to do the opposite. I'm just going to tell you how I actually live as a digital minimalist, at least in the AM. And you can decide for yourself if my lifestyle is absolutely awful. Or if you like it, this could be one of the resolutions that you break immediately by the third week of January. So let's give it a try.
I guess I should say the morning begins the night before. I always plug my phone in outside of my bedroom before I go to bed.
And so when I wake up, I run straight to the window. I did get this from Huberman Lab. I open the window, rain or shine — mostly shine where I live, never snow, for the love of God. I left that New York City snow life far, far behind, for better or worse.
And I throw the window open and I just try to get sunlight into my eyes. Now, I don't know if this is actually good for you because UV rays are supposed to — I don't know, hurt your corneas, your retinas. I don't know. I'm a podcaster, not a scientist, but they're not supposed to be good for your eyes. Going to damage your eyesight.
But not having sun, unadulterated sun, is also bad for your eyes. So honestly, I don't know. Like, supposedly you're allowed to wear glasses, but you can't go through a window pane. Whatever, man. I just stick my face up to the screen and I get in my sunlight. While I am staring into the sun, burning my corneas, my retinas, whatever it is, I drink at least half a bottle. So these are 16.9 ounces. I drink at least half a bottle.
If I drink too much more than that, I do kick up my heartburn. I get nauseous.
So I drink that while staring into the sun — not directly, good God. Now I'm gonna have to put a disclaimer. This is not medical advice. Don't listen to something you hear from a podcaster who decided she would spend her life being an actor, a dancer, and a writer.
If you're getting medical advice from somebody like that, yeah, you've got bigger problems. So that's what I do.
Morning Routine: Making the Bed and Stretching
And then actually, I make my bed right away. I just realized this. I make my bed right away because if I don't, it'll never happen. It's a gift. Morning Sophia's gift to night Sophia. And then I do the water and the staring into the sun. I do some stretches. The older you get, the more you have to do.
Electrolytes and Creatine
Okay. So after that, I go and immediately drink more water, this time with electrolytes. I hate flavoring, all that extra stuff — literally everything on earth gives me heartburn, but that extra stuff is just killer on the stomach, especially an empty stomach. So I use this completely nothing-added-to-it brand.
It's Seeking Health, probably something like Optimal Electrolyte. I like it because it also has creatine, which I didn't really know what that was when I bought it. This was just the only thing I could find. After I bought it I started reading more about it, and it turns out that creatine is not only amazing for women who lift, but it also is the magic trick when you have not gotten enough sleep. You can creatine yourself into making it through the day. That's why you're not actually supposed to take this within two hours of wanting to go to bed.
So here I take my creatine and I gotta say, I think it's helping. Unless you're running like a true double-blind study, I don't know if there's a one-to-one correlation between — or causation between — anything I'm saying, but I have found that once I started taking this electrolyte, which I've been having for at least a year now, I have been able to drop a lot of my puffiness, my extra weight, whether it's water weight or whatnot, and my arms look a lot better. I don't look as puffy and bloated as I used to.
So is it the creatine? Is it the electrolytes? I have no idea, but I'm gonna keep doing it. I'll take that and then at this point there is still zero phone.
Breakfast: Protein and Greens
After that, I will have breakfast. I always have to have protein. I hate sweet things in the morning. Sugar in general doesn't make me feel good, but you know, I love the taste of dessert. But yeah, the earlier I have sugar, the worse. So it has to be protein.
I have been eating eggs pretty much every single day since 2010, 2009.
There was an acupuncturist once who was doing something and was just like, "Oh, you're getting allergic to eggs, so you can't have anything with egg in it." Okay. "Now you're allergic to vitamin B, so you can't have anything with vitamin B." That is literally everything.
I was on a cauliflower and rice and fried fish diet for 25 hours. Why 25? That was the protocol.
I was big on the woo. I'm not anymore. I'm so anti-new-age anything these days because of all the weirdness that I got myself involved in over a decade ago. So I'm just like, I'm not gonna be weird anymore. I'm just not gonna be weird anymore. I mean, look how well that's going.
So I eat eggs. I have to have meat. I eat about six or seven times a day. I have to have animal meat with pretty much all of that. Yeah, I'm a vampire. I mean, I'm like a Twilight vampire. I'm like a Cullen. You know, where I'm a vegetarian — I only eat animals. No, I would probably eat human too if I was a vampire.
So I do my breakfast. This is a big change that I made. So I was listening to this book by this — she was recommending we add more greens to breakfast. And I was like, is this the key? Because I would eat my omelet or whatever it was, and I would be hungry an hour later. I can't even get anything done after breakfast. I have to eat again right away.
So I started adding a fuck ton of vegetables. Baby spinach, baby kale, super easy, just grab that, ready-made salad, right? Tomatoes, cucumbers, what else — avocado, just any veggie you like. And if you're even too lazy to cut, you can just get cherry tomatoes. And they sell these mini baby cucumbers at Walmart that are super, super affordable. Veggies don't cost a lot in this country.
This is something we take for granted. When relatives come from Taiwan, China, anywhere else that you would think the food would be more affordable, they come here and they're like — number one, why are your vegetables — why do they have elephantitis? And I'm like, okay, yeah, no, that's our growth hormones. Ignore that part.
But the next biggest thing they say is like, why is everything so cheap here? And I'm like, yeah. We probably have really bad exploitation for our farm stuff. We could probably solve world hunger, but like, are we going to do that?
And so now my plate is at least half greens and I can stay so much fuller and actually get shit done.
Eating Outside and Managing MOG Antibody Disease
I do breakfast outside. This is difficult in the summer where our temperatures can go into the 90s and sometimes, if there's a heat wave, 100. And with my disease — MOG antibody disease, which is similar to MS — we are extremely heat sensitive. And so unfortunately, I will go outside — like sometimes I'll wear my ice neckerchief, or my ice wrap around my head.
As much as I can, I will be outside. Like today, it's raining and I was just kind of huddled under the two-by-two-foot area that isn't under the rain. And then I take my vitamin D drops, also through Seeking Health brand. I just love this brand. They're not sponsors, although they should be. I'm plugging them because I don't want them to ever go out of business because I would be screwed.
The Phone-Free Morning
So it's only after I do all that and I finish, then I can turn my phone on and face the world. So that's how I have a digital minimalist morning.
To me, these routines are simple. It's not like I did them all at once. I just tried something and then a couple months later I learned and then I tried something else.
And I did this because I used to be just like any other chronically online person. I would start my mornings by turning on the phone. I spent many, many years too depressed to get out of bed.
But that was just making things worse. Now that I have this routine, I have something to jump out of bed for. It's like, okay, jump right out of bed, throw the window open, and that light actually helps to wake me up. Once I had this habit and once I didn't touch the phone, I found that I was so much less anxious. Because you turn on the phone, you're just like — now I'm going to check my email and I'll have to respond to all these messages. My brain is just so crowded with stuff. And now that I do everything in reverse, I take care of myself first. It signals to me — nothing is that serious. I don't need to be on the phone.
I'm not a completely insane dictator who's leading the world. I don't need to be on my phone. I'm not that important. Nobody cares. Nobody really cares. They really don't. And so once I did that, everything is so much more chill. I have resources. I'm fed. My blood sugar is stable. My cortisol levels are down. Especially women — we need to eat within 30 minutes of getting up because our cortisol levels are spiking. We need to get that down.
So I'm wondering if you guys have any digital minimalist tips you found to start your day right. Let me know. Leave a comment under the YouTube video. Go to my — I've got a link right in the show notes. Help us all out. Let us all know how you've been optimizing your morning.
Sophia Chang (10:21)
Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Sophia Chang Show. If you like what you heard, the best way you can help me out is by subscribing to my newsletter. There's a link in the show notes. On my Substack, that is thesophiachang.substack.com. And the second best way is to share this with your friends so they too can subscribe. Leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to this. Without you, I would just be talking to nobody, and that's really sad.
