My typical day
Inspired by Anton Sten’s post on the same topic I wanted to share what my day looks like. Seems it’s a twitter trend originally, and I think it’s a valuable exercise. Both thinking about one’s own day and learning from others.
Because I lift heavy weights and have a history of insomnia I have quite a strict schedule for routine things like eating and sleeping. My days looks mostly like below, but I only work out 3 days per week.
07:00 - I wake up from my Apple Watch buzzing. I stretch and get out of bed. You can’t snooze and sleep well with insomnia, so I haven’t since I was a teenager.
07:00 - 09:00 After I get up I weigh myself on my WiThings scale. I’ve done this for years now, and it’s a good way to track if I’m eating and sleeping right. I only care about the body fay percentage.
After that I have coffee, maybe walk around the block, and if I’m not exercising I have a shower, ending with 30s of cold water. Final step of my morning process: meditating 15 minutes.
Then I catch up on notifications and read if anything catches my eye, which something usually does…
09:00 - 12:00 This is my main work block. I try to avoid meetings during this time, but my current client has a bunch of checkins so there’s at least a morning standup. I usually check my calendar, make sure I haven’t planned too many todo’s, and simply start whatever is most pressing.
12:00 - 12:45ish Lunch break, this is my first meal of the day. I try to keep it light as I tend to get really drowsy in the early afternoons, but since this is a workout day, I eat about 800kcal. Carb and protein split at around 50/50.
This is also when I have my last coffee. Can’t drink coffee in the afternoons and still get a good nights sleep sadly.
13:00 - 15:00 My second work block. This is usually meeting time, or email time, or both.
If I’m not cautious and get to sedentary during lunch, there’s a risk I get drowsy and end up doom scrolling twitter at this point. I’m not proud of it, I just haven’t found a solid fix for this yet.
15:00 - 17:00 It’s time to head to the gym before it gets too crowded! I used to go later in the day, but the pandemic imposed severe restrictions on people per square meter, so I learned to leave early. 15:00 has been my approximate time the past few months. Though I expect meetings in the fall will start pushing this later in the day.
17:00 - 17:45 Time to eat again, and then shower. This meal is usually quite obscene, as I need to eat 160g of protein in a day (which is a lot). I eat something like 1000kcal in this meal. Unless we’re not having popcorn later, because if we don’t I need to push it into at least 1500kcal.
18:00 - 19:00 My final work block. I finish up lose threads, or replan the things I didn’t get to. Usually I’m quite tired at this point, so I’ll do less creative things and focus on simple tasks.
19:00 - 21:00 My life partner and I will relax together. Usually eating a ton of popcorn and watching something, or listening to a podcast.
Lately we’ve been exploring classic cinema, and I’m happy we’re no longer participating in the gotta watch all the latest shows frenzy.
21:00 Time to get ready for bed. My sleep schedule is really strict, as a slight deviation can leave me with several days of bad sleep.
21:30 I read for about an hour before falling sleep. I tend to become really into either fiction or non-fiction for periods. Currently I want to read all the Harvard Business School strategy books, but because I’m on “vacation” I’m forcing myself to read fiction. Loving Bonjour Tristesse and A Moveable Feast though.
22:30 Lights out.