In continuation of my “easy win” posts in order to catch up for the new year, I thought it might be interesting to some to see what my daily schedule is, and how it might compare to the average person.
Most days I wake up between 5 and 5:30. It’s a time range and not a definitive time because I use the Sleep Cycle app, which wakes you up at the best time within a 30 minute interval.
Many people’s first reaction to me waking up at 5 in the morning every day is that I must really have a lot of discipline. Not true. You see, the problem with waking up at a normal human hour is that everyone else wakes up at that time too, which means right from the get-go people are bugging you with messages, calls, and other such stuff. So, you wake up a little bit earlier than them so you can have your moment of peace. But then they wise up to you waking earlier, and they wake earlier themselves. Now all of a sudden you’ve got a nuclear arms race where whoever can wake up the earliest and escape the contact of other people wins.
For me, 5 o’clock was a good time where I could reasonably wake up and feel alive but at the same time most others would not dare touch. So that’s my logic on that.
From there, I always get done with a shower, going into a coffee and some reading. Some of you may recall I used to take my showers cold. I stopped doing this, not because the technique stopped working but because I realized a rather awkward practical issue: cold water doesn’t rinse away body wash as well, so I would always leave showers still soapy. If anyone knows a good solution to this, let me know!
As for the coffee and reading part, it’s pretty straightforward. I brew a coffee, and the entire time I’m drinking the coffee I dedicate to reading. The reading stops when the coffee ends. As for what the reading entails, it’s usually whatever (physical) books I’m currently working through. I have a very short attention span, so I’m using reading 5 to 10 books at a time — dependent on the number of bookmarks I have. That way, if I feel myself dozing off, I just move to the next book in the rotation.
My working day starts around 7:30 to 8:30. I work in 50/10 pomodoros with an hour for lunch as the long break. That lunch break marks the switch between product (writing, course development, other fun stuff) and marketing (boring things I must do to survive). So 4 pomos for product, 4 pomos for marketing, totaling around 8 hours of work. As for which one goes first, product or marketing, it depends on where (I think) most of the distractions of the day are going to be. Product tends to require deep focus work, whereas marketing is pretty mindless — in other words, you can pick it up after being distracted without too much trouble. So if I see a lot of boring meetings set in the morning, or relatives visiting in the afternoon, I’ll set marketing for the first or second block, respectively.
Now, after I finish work for the day, I go into my night routine. Based on what my morning routine was, I’m sure many of you are excited to know what my night routine is like. Here are the basics:
Just kidding, I lied. I have no night routine.
I don’t know how you people do it, the second I get off work the whole experience is a blur until I go to bed for the night. I mean, I’m doing something in that time — whether it be working on an experimental project, talking with friends and family, or just relaxing and playing some videogames — but there is no routine. So no, I can’t really help you here. I can at least tell you when I usually go to bed, which is 10 — making up about 7 hours of sleep.
Anyway, that’s it for my daily routine. Like I said, short post, just trying to catch up in the scheduling. But the next few should be pretty interesting. I’ll see you then!
