My daily routine

Working independently means the burden and opportunity of creating my own structure. I’ve found ritual and routine essential to guide me.

When my days don’t go well, it’s often because something derailed me in the morning, and I never really got back on track. The high-order bit for my productivity is whether I complete a deeply-focused morning creative block. So my day is structured around making intense creative mornings happen.

• ~7:00: Wake; shower; walk, train, feed my dog; make coffee
• ~7:45 – 13:45: Uninterrupted morning working block
  • Default environment: WiFi off; Forest on my phone; alone at my desk (It’s hard to hear yourself think)
  • No meetings; working in 25m/5m pomodoros (see notes on Pomodoro technique); no extended breaks (I find maintaining momentum is more important than combatting fatigue)
  • Start a Daily working log, write for a minute or so about how I’m feeling and my intentions for the day; look at my Menu for the week, get a sense of what I’d like to dig into.
  • Dig into whatever seems most exciting creatively, usually sticking to one task for the entire block
  • Details here vary depending on my projects and their status. Sometimes it’ll be My morning writing practice; sometimes it’s designing or building prototypes; sometimes it’s reading through a stack of material about something I’m trying to understand.
  • If I start to run out of steam (usually around pomodoro 10), I’ll switch to administrative and procedural tasks, like email time: I’ll spend ~30m ~3 times a week replying to email (and generally ignore it otherwise).
  • I eat lunch at my desk. It’s usually Chopped salad or Quiche.
  • After this block, I think of my workday as effectively “done” and free myself from any further sense of obligation.
• ~2 – 3: Decompression walk with my dog. Often also walking with a friend or taking a meeting by phone at this time.
• ~3 – 6:30: Unstructured time. Napping, socialization, meditating, exercising, reading, more walking.
• ~6:30 – 8: Cooking, dinner.
• 8 – 10:30: (If a friend wasn’t over for dinner) piano, reading, time with Sara.