A Day in the Life

People can learn by rote, or being instructed. But those that retain the information the longest are the ones who can apply it to their own perspective. As a teacher the things I found students retained were the things that they could relate to or customize to their own.

The same thing applies out of school. A reader recently contacted me to learn about my typical day so that she could see if anything I did could help her structure her own. Rather than send her an overly-long email, I decided to make it a post with the hopes it might help other people too.

Always Busy

I have never been one just to do the minimum in my life. When I was a teenager I attended a local university for advanced education in music theory. When I was in college I worked 30 hours a week in addition to my engineering coursework and being an officer in my fraternity. When I was done with school, I always had hobbies and activities that kept me busy outside of working hours. It’s true to this day: although I work full time, I still lead a group at my church, participate in three musical groups, knit, learn percussion and hurdy-gurdy, blog and write.

And the whole reason I can do that is because my days are pretty well structured.

My Day

I am going to share with you all the details of a week’s schedule. Because my days are structured, there is little variation from day to day, but where there is it is noticed.

One thing you need to note is that I am still working from home, and that eliminates commuting from my schedule.

Morning

My alarm goes off at 6 every morning. Because I don’t wake up without light, I use a sunrise alarm clock* in addition to my phone alarm.

6:00 to 6:05. I go downstairs, eat a piece of fruit and pour my first cup of coffee.

6:05 to 6:25. I spend 15 minutes in meditation. The first part is breath-focused (with coffee in hand, eyes open). The second part is visualization. This is one of the few times during the day that I slow down and be present.

6:25 to 6:40. I write 500 words in my Morning Pages app. This free-flow writing gets the brain started and allows me to get everything out of my brain.

6:40 to 6:45. I read from my two daily readers and a book on self-discipline.

6:45 to 6:50. I write in my journal based on what I have read. This helps me retain the words and allows me to draw connections between them.

6:50-6:51. I jot down my gratitude practice items. Three things to be grateful for, three things that will make it a good day and an affirmation.

6:51-6:55. I check the email for a website I manage. I delete all the backup notifications and get a general feel for what is going on with the administrators.

6:55-7:00. I do a medium-hard Sudoku puzzle. This gets my brain cells moving.

7:00-7:20. I do my yoga stretches for my hips and back, then jump over to FitOn to do a short workout, usually stretching or weights.

Work – AM

7:20-7:30. I make my breakfast, pour a second cup of coffee and head up to my office. I open my personal notebook so I know what I can do during my down time at work.

7:30-8:30. I check my work notebook to see what is priority for the day, then I check all the system messages and deal with any outages.

8:30-9:30. I work on the priority of the day. When my computer is busy compiling, deploying or running code I will do something from my personal list.

9:30-10:00. Our daily team scrum meeting. We are supposed to say what we did, what we are doing and any problems that we need the boss’s help on. Rarely does it happen that way. I generally tune out when my coworkers are nattering on about emails they sent or something not work-related.

10:00-noon. This is prime working time for me. My schedule is mostly focused work, and as I have breaks while the computer is doing other things I check my email or do tasks from my list.

Lunch and Afternoon

Noon-1:00. I check my email if I haven’t gotten to it yet, doing a quick deletion pass. I eat lunch, then do DuoLingo and practice percussion before going back up to my desk.

1:00-4:15. General working time.

4:15-4:30. My work shut down time. I update my notes pages in my notebook, update my timesheet, check in code that has been completed that day and set up my page for the next day.

After Work

4:30-5:15. Walking with my daughter, rain or shine.

5:15-6:00. This is the time to do housework and anything that remains of my repeating maintenance tasks from the list for the day. Once this week I did workouts from FitOn, but that was on days I wasn’t cooking and didn’t have a meeting.

6:00-7:00. Dinner prep. If I am not cooking that night, I will either play on my Nintendo Switch or check email. One day this week I had a church meeting at 6 and so I made sure I wasn’t the cook.

7:00-7:30. Dinner with my family and clean up. This past week I had a programming user group meeting that started at 7 one night. My husband brought dinner up to me during that time, and I ate while I listened.

Evening

7:30-9:30. This is my project time. This week I did the following during the project time:

• Monday: wrote blog articles, recorded a podcast episode.
• Tuesday: had a phone call from a friend and crafted; updated blog forms.
• Wednesday: (after my user group) worked on a presentation for my church group, watched Time Team with my husband.
• Thursday: spent the evening with my daughter downstairs, listening to music and puttering around on my Switch and phone.
• Friday: watched Only Murders in the Building with husband and daughter; blogged.

9:30-10:30. Plan the next day in my bullet journal. Shower, read and lights out by 10:30.

It’s All Routine

My days vary little from the routine posted above. By keeping to the same schedule I am able to handle all of the routine tasks during the day and still have room for enjoyment, relaxation and projects in the evening.