What's your daily routine?
"Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions." —Elizabeth King
I'm obsessed with routine. And I approach my job with perhaps the same focus and intensity as a professional athlete. Because working on a startup is hard. Especially when your duties call for you to be both a maker and a manager.
I won't share my entire process because that could fill a small book. But I'll share just a small part of it to kick off this thread:
- Scheduled website blocking. Before I even wake up, a website-blocking app called Freedom blocks social media and news sites from 5am to 10am.
- Eat the frog. When I get up in the morning, I figure out my single most important task and work on it for 100–150 minutes. It doesn't matter that I finish — only that I put in the time and effort. I do this every morning without exception. On my birthday. On vacation. On days where I'm sick. Doesn't matter. It usually means announcing this policy to friends and colleagues and putting DND mode on my devices. Occasionally I'll cancel an afternoon meeting if I wake up late.
- Meditation. After eating the frog, I take 5–15 minutes to meditate. Then I schedule the rest of my day. Meditation isn't a religious or mystical thing for me. It's just a reliable pattern interrupt that lets me stop ruminating about the work I've been doing all morning and take a clear-eyed view of the other stuff I need to do that day.
Enough about me. Do you have a routine?
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I'll be honest.
9am - wake up
9:10am - coffee and cigarette
9:15am - 11am - Reddit, HN, IH, email, and bunch of other BS
11am - 11:30am - brunch and anime
11:30am - 2pm - drink kratom, smoke, and stare at all the work that needs to be done and think that maybe it's not worth the hassle and I'm not worthy
2pm - 5pm - do as little work as possible to qualify for a new git commit and not feel like shit for the rest of the evening
5pm - 9pm - the "evening edition" of Reddit and all the BS, snacking, smoking
9pm - 10pm - masturbate
10pm - 10:30pm - post-nut clarity cigarette, shame, sudden burst of motivation, vowing to turn my life around starting next morning
10:30pm - 1am - movie, some YouTube, sleep
In all seriousness, sounds like you might have depression. I went undiagnosed for 26 years. It's never too late to get treatment.
Well, could be worse (or better, depending on how you look at it): https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/33487/hunter-s-thompsons-daily-routine
Mine is very similar, except mix in 3 kids and everything that goes with that throughout the whole damn day. School is out, so they are all home for now. Sometimes I escape for a few hours to a local coworking space to decompress and actually get something done.
I have 3 kids too!. 2 year old, 9 year old girl and 12 year old boy. I feel your struggles here as I work remote. Sometimes its not even them I feel its me that worries about everything else and everybody else which is a distraction.
-- the elon musk
Also @jdnoc recommended the book Deep Work by Cal Newport on Twitter. It's about being intentional with your time. Great read that helped me focus on what's important.
+1 for deep work.
also:
Thank you for these recommendations, have added them to my list. 🙏
I'm reading Spelunky by Derek Yu at the moment. It's about his procedurally generated indie hit game of the same name. Even though it's about a game there is a lot in there for indie hackers. Will write a post about it.
+1 for Deep Work. Cal's book is what inspired me in the beginning, to start deepworkmate.com
+1 to Elon for the Dune reference
Yes, if you want to geek out all on all things deep work, Cal's your guy. He also has a great podcast where he takes listener questions.
Mine is almost the same as yours. But I do plan my frog the day before.
nice!
i've got a system that more-or-less always keeps track of what the frog is. but i try to follow the model of jack welch and ask myself "what needs to be done now?" (with a clear emphasis on "now").
often, "this morning channing" has a different assessment than "last night channing."
Hehe, true. When I'm fresh I often revise my frog in the morning. I actually do it so I can get the stuff out of my head and feel "offline".
I usually set my goals more or less like an old school action plan. This way I know I'm being productive with a consistent goal. My frogs usually are small bites from the main goal.
I have a very different sleep cycle.
My day actually starts at 12.00 AM Midnight.
I work on my tasks till 5 AM, this is my peak time, out of the 5 hours I do highly focused work for around 4.30 hours.
The remaining 30 minutes are taken as small breaks.
I'm on a short break right now, I usually open indie hackers or product hunt and check if anything interesting has popped up, or I will watch a short youtube video.
Once I am finished I will take some food, and go to sleep. I sleep between 7.30 to 8 hours. i wake up around the time for lunch. and at around 2.30 - 3, I will enter work mode again. and it will continue till 7, in between small breaks. I will hit the badminton court at 7, sweat for 2 hours. getting back home, I spend time with my mom and dad, do some journaling and the next day begins. every day I get around 7.30 - 8 super focused work time.
I'm gonna ship my first product within a week. 🚀
hell yeah. good luck
Don't go by the exact numbers because no matter how much you plan, something will come up so you need to be flexible enough haha! This is just a rough plan of how my day usually goes 👇
6:30: Wake up at 6:30 and drink water first
6:30 - 6:45: 15 Minute breathing session in balcony
6:45 - 7:30: Fresh up
7:30 - 8:00: Check emails and add tasks on my Brutask list
8 - 6 : Start working with my team on agency projects and meetings
6 - 7: Big break (usually walking downstairs)
7 - 9: research and work on new product features for ruttl
9 - 10:30: Relax, unwind and going back to sleep
What is a breathing session?
i came here to ask the same
Glad to answer that for you and @marcusstenbeck!
So breathing session is a part of the yoga culture in India. It's very simple.
Just block out 15 minutes of absolutely zero distractions in the morning. The first 10 minutes is plain meditation (breathe in-breathe out exercises+listening to the environment)
This ususally works best when I am in my hometown, surrounded by trees and super peaceful roads
The next 5 minutes involves visualization of the day. I find that giving a structure to how my day will go usually results in best productivity. Mostly I select 2-3 most important things for the day rather than doing small strides on 8-10 different tasks.
P.S - Yes @skulogi pranayama is the exact exercise that I was talking about.
I believe this :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranayama
Wake up, drink 500mL water first thing in the morning.
Say good morning to google and she'll tell me the forecast, my calendar events, and my reminders
Clean my room then take a bath
On weekdays:
8am to 5pm - work (my life's first priority at the moment)
6pm to 7pm - algorithm practice (my life's third priority at the moment)
7pm to 9pm - talk to my gf about our day (my life's 2nd priority at the moment)
On saturdays:
8am to 4pm - algorithm practice
4pm to 9pm - hang out with family/friends/gf and rest (online of course)
On sundays:
8am to 4pm - study linear algebra (building my foundations for ML -> job switch) (my life's 4th priority at the moment)
4pm to 9pm - hang out with family/friends/gf and rest (online of course)
sleep, say goodnight to everyone and to google as she tells me my calendar events and reminders for tomorrow.
I share your obsession and keep tuning my routine constantly, love to learn what others are doing.
This is my current approach/principles:
There is a lot more for the book :)
love this!
right, this helps to reduce the stress of the zeigarnik effect, where an "unparked" issue does the equivalent of constantly tugging at your sleeve until you take action on it or log it somewhere.
here's a question for you: how much time(ish) would you say you spend per day doing "metawork" — planning, logging, categorizing, retrieving? for me, this could easily be around an hour total. on days when i'm planning the week or month, it's more like two or three hours.
Indeed, in the end you try to avoid distractions, and have a clear focus to get your work done. I would guess I spent somewhere between 10-30 minutes per day and an hour start of week/month.
For context, I have 12 boards that I use to plan work between me and my team on a daily basis, and a team of 8.
I think there are three things important when planning work to not overplan it:
Since having a baby, I switched from night owl to early bird chronotype just to get daily deep work done.
4.30am - wake, meditation, coffee. Meditation to me is like brushing my teeth, mental hygiene. A grounding way to start my day.
5am - morning affirmation/visualisation of my $5k MRR goal, put $2 in a jar as a fun money abundance ritual. Then phone set to DND, and I do the most important work of the day, usually coding, for next 1h.
6am - short break, shower
630am - continue on most important task of the day till baby wake ~8am
So I get a good 3h block of deep work done even before most people start work. Always feels great to have a head start on the day, and I can be more present to fathering duties during the day.
for years i was waking up at 4:30am. then a month's worth of travel and other chaos shook me out of this cycle and i've struggled to get back to it.
fortunately for me i don't have kids, so i'm very able to adjust to a later schedule, but i'd like to get back down to at least 5:30ish
Talking about disruptive chaos, it was exactly the same thing that got me on the 4.30-5am wake schedule - having the baby in the bedroom. I was always a night owl, but with baby cries around 4-5am, I thought, why not just wake earlier since I'm up already. ;D
So maybe the lesson in this is...artificially introduce some disruption/chaos to develop new sleep/wake habits? lol
Often, it's just chaos... I go back and forth on the daily routine thing honestly.
Sometimes I give it a real go, and I do see the benefit in time booking the first hour 1/2 for deep work and blocking my calendar out a week in advance etc. But there's something in me that really hates routine - part of the reason I chose to work the way I do is because I want to be able to wake up and go 'its sunny, no thank you work' and go horse riding all morning or for a big walk or to take my cousins to the park.
So often the routine makes me feel trapped and makes me prioritise productivity over enjoyment. Plus, I really thrive on variety and change.
I'm much better at routine in the winter though, where I don't really want to go outside anyway and routine helps make the dark, cold mornings feel better. But in the summer I run in the opposite direction from routine.
Maybe I should have a seasonal routine, is that a thing?!
i'm actually pretty similar. that's actually why i like my particular routine.
if i close the door first thing in the morning and do a couple hours of important work, i almost never feel bad about doing whatever i want to do the rest of the day.
that's a really nice way to think about it
This is nice! I really like the part
"Scheduled website blocking. Before I even wake up, a website-blocking app called Freedom blocks social media and news sites from 5am to 10am."
It takes a lot of discipline to block out social media. In some ways social media apps have a great impact on how people behave, does routinely and almost a form of addiction, wether it's good or bad depends on how well handle it.
Thanks for sharing Channing! Wishing you a great week ahead 🚀
yep. discipline is not my strength, nor is focus. in fact i've been diagnosed with ADHD, but perhaps that's not worth a whole lot given how readily US doctors hand out diagnoses these days.
in any case, i make up for my weaknesses in resourcefulness. there are tons of tools these days that help you "hack back" control of your energy and attention.
I'll think about my routine in a bit, but I want to say you need to make sure to take care of yourself first @channingallen! If you're sick, you should rest. Just want to throw that out there as trying to do too much can lead to burnout quick.
right, i give myself permission to go it slow on sick days… as long as i go.
I hadn't heard of the Eat the Frog idea before but the name is memorable and sounds like it's worth trying. Thanks for sharing!
My routine:
i like the "eat the frog" idea. totally makes sense. never heard of it though.
I'm not sure where the idea came from, but I'm pretty sure I read it on Brian Tracy's website. Maybe this will help: https://www.briantracy.com/blog/time-management/the-truth-about-frogs/
+1!
i was in the writing world before i was in the startup world or even the tech world. and the original quote is said to have come from mark twain, so i encountered it a while ago.
i've tried out tons of different techniques, approaches, systems, etc. but for me, eating the frog is the only one that consistently gets results.
i don't do this exactly... but same difference: i focus on the most high-value (not necessarily the hardest) first... then, i kinda sort from there.
right: when you drop the fancy label it's just doing the important thing first.
100%. the important thing often has a way of puffing out its chest and posing as the hardest thing, but all that really matters is the important part.
really good point; sometimes these things head-fake you.
... btw, how are things going with your team? i think of you folks all the time. hit me up anytime.
*Wake
*Drink 32oz of water
*Run up +1 mile up a hill
*Plan the day with coffee
*Work
*Document the day (eat a treat of Skittles)
Mine goes like this (too much of detail I guess :) ) :
7:30 - 8:00 - Wake up
8:00 - Contemplate on exercising, but decide against it, can always be done in the evening. Let me go and brew that coffee instead.
8:15 - 8:30 - Have coffee on my balcony while reading a book on Kindle (current favs : Rhythm of war / Atomic habits / 168 hours)
8:30 - Get milk ready for kids, try nudging the older one to wake up to attend her online classes, while trying my best to ensure the younger one drinks his milk.
8:30 - 9:30 - Take bath , get ready, have breakfast (usually liquid breakfast these days like oats/banana/dry fruits/chia seeds smoothie)
9:30 - 11:30 - Work at my day job (which pays bills). I do mostly scrum meetings and coding in the mornings. I try to push as many discussions/code review sessions to post lunch.
11:30 - Get my kids ready , run behind them to take bath, put on body lotion , finish their breakfast etc.
12:15 - 1:30 - Continue working at my day job
1:30 - 2:30 - Lunch break and some Netflix.
2:30 - 5:30 - Attend meetings and/or if I get time, and if I don't feel too sleepy , code/test my code / review code.
5:30 - 6:00 - wind up work , commit any code or send out any reqd meeting notices for the next day and freshen up. Remember that I had to exercise, oh well, maybe next morning !
6:00 - 6:30 - Watch more Netflix.
6:30 - 7:30 - Browse online, ponder over future and when enough insecurity creeps in, try solving any algo/ds problems online. Get frustrated at my inability to solve medium/hard problems on leetcode even after spending over 1.5 decades in s/w dev (shows how disconnected the interview procedure is).
7:30 - 8:30 - Browse some more / play video games with kids / have dinner.
8:30 - 9:30 - Sit and plan on how I would improve my life, how I would become a billionaire by building that unicorn, generate ideas, write my goals, check out youtube on how to rise early, how to set aside focused time and on and on.
9:30 - 10:00 - put my kids to bed, while reading a book on the side. This has become such a routine, that these days my kids get my kindle to me around this time.
10:00 - 11:30/12:00 - Watch a movie on Netflix (make my fav drink / snacks on the side)
Weekends are mostly lazing around the house and watching more of netflix/ spending time with family , spending some time solving ds/algo problems online and reading random articles/watching youtube about tech like scaling / indie game development etc etc.
Everytime, I look at the people who work on their side projects with a family / day job, I can't help but appreciate their will power / discipline. Kudos to you guys, you get back to that side project of yours, while I check out which is the latest movie to watch on Netflix !
My daily routine as a full time working mum with side projects
6am wake up drinking a glass of water.
Walking the dog - chilling for 20 minutes and then thinking about things I need to do.
7am - back home, coffee and working on side projects.
8am - finishing side projects, managing tasks on Trello.
8-8:30 - preparing for work.
8:30 - 18:00 - working.
18:00 - 21:00 - rest/friends/family
21:00-23:00 - side projects/more resting depends on mood.
This way I make sure to invest at least 8-10 hours a week in my side projects - and can push more during the weekends.
This also allows me to not be only working.
And my dog is happy
Most days...
Wake, coffee
Read
Productive work - 60 mins
Meetings (except no-meeting Wednesdays)
Exercise (75-90 mins)
Productive work (120 mins)
Plan next day
Read - finish
Wake up, grab a brush and put a little make up.
Sorry, couldn't resist 😂
Wake up, work, cook lunch for my wife (I fast). Work while fasting until 16:30 - 17:00, eat a very very light meal. Keep working. Cook dinner for me and my wife at 19:30. Keep working. I've been trying to play a game 1-2 hs a day recently. I get bored really fast. Sometimes I sleep.
Nah I sleep about 6hs but go to bed and wake up time varies drastically depending on the situation.
Some tasks make me procrastinate more than others, but I usually get at least 6hs of flow sate in total.
I've found that forced, short distractions, keep me focused. If they are part of my routine they become more manageable.
Since I'm still a student, most of my day goes either into studying or going to the gym.
But I have a fixed 3 to 4 hours of outreaching big companies for my freelancing services.
For the moment, I'm only focusing on building my capital that's why I need to freelance because I get paid instantly once I finish the project.
Considering my website @couponlak.com , I've sold it recently for a good price so it allowed me to have more money and a big capital for my next projects.
That's all I do now.
Once I'll have a big amount of money (close to 6 figures), I'll start sharing my updates here again !
I'll be honest also.
8:00 am - wake up
8:00 am - 8:30 am - hit snooze
8:30 am - 10:00 am - water, coffee, vape, reddit, email, argue with wife about the day's plans and what to do with the 3 kids. School is usually out because of a holiday or covid.
10:00 am - 11:00 am - sneak away somewhere quiet and re-arrange things on trello pretending to get thing done. If hung over, go outside and run.
11:30 am - 1:30 pm - taking the kids outside.
2:00 pm - 6:00 pm - work from co-working space.
6:30 pm - 9:00 pm - kids dinner, get them into bed, argue with wife.
9:00 pm - 12:00 am - work some more.
12:00 am - 2:00 am - Hearthstone, CoD, YouTube, Reddit. If its a friday or saturday then wine, and 2 cans of Murphy's Irish Stout.
Ooooofffff, the most intense ive seen. How long have your routine goes like this?
My routine (since last week, but I love it and plan to stick to It):
6:30 Wake up
6:40 Gratitude journal
6:50 Stretching
7:30 – 8 Journaling (Morning Pages)
8 – 9 Breakfast and relax, shower
9 – 12 Work
12 – 13 Lunch, perhaps walk
13 – 16 Work
16 – 16:30 Break, snack
16:30 – 18 Work
18 – 19 Exercise
19 Meditation
19-22:30 Downtime
22:30 Bedtime
If you want details, here's my blog post about it https://zylka.io/i-swapped-morning-coffee-for-jalapeno-peppers-my-crazy-new-routine/
i need to add this to my process. thanks for the reminder!
my field is about SEO and and i can use mobile daily so it is good for me to in touch with all social platform .https://www.techgadgetsera.com/
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I'm flexible with time when I wake up.
Usually it's around 8 a.m. but lately I've been waking up in the noon.
After waking up, I go to bathroom, do some pushups and make my first coffee of the day which I'll drink while staring at my phone for at least an hour.
Turn on my laptop, check Jira, Linear, Github and do some work for at least an hour.
Have some breakfest.
More work.
Make second coffee.
More work.
Stare at my phone.
Do more work or watch anime.
Go to sleep around 2 a.m.
Repeat.
Morning routine is probably the most important to me the rest kinda varies during the day:
Wake up, child duties, muddle through a day's work, child/house duties, bed. Repeat.
While it is kind of interesting to learn about other people's routines, I don't really do routines. I don't think it's healthy :). I would probably have coffee sometime in the morning, and that's as much routine as I have haha.
Forcing yourself to work is not actually as effective. Just wait for your moment. When the productivity strikes, keep going. If not, go and listen to a podcast.
I rarely plan my daily routine because I rarely achieve what I intended to do. Normally, I just do what I often do:
Wake up → prepare food for kids → bring kids to school → check mail → order notes to self → answer support requests → fix any high priority bugs → make espresso → work on marketing or features depending on week → make espresso → continue work on marketing or features → pick up kids from school → send notes to self about any ideas I have and wait for tomorrow morning.
how do you send notes to yourself? i do this by emailing myself at 3am like a psychopath.
I use Noto on iOS 👉 https://noto.fyi/
Great! Thank you.
Here is my routine:
Wake up, drink a glass of water (really helps defog my brain), make coffee, and sip it while checking notifications/emails. Prioritize the top items to work on in the morning. The first meal is usually at 12 PM (with a glass of water again .. really tryna increase my daily water intake haha). Continue to work/meet/talk to the team until 5 ish which is when my dog comes barking at me to go for a walk. Walk for 45 - 60 mins .. come back home, 30 min workout, and start prepping dinner so we can eat by 7 ish PM. Have dinner (you can guess by now .. with a glass of water), browse IH for 20 mins, read and catch up with anything personal/creative until it is time for bed.
Will be trying the eat the frog approach tomorrow. This is more or less my current routine
• 5:30am to 6am - Make coffee and read
• 6am to 3pm - Work at the day job
• 3pm to 4:30pm - Run/bike/relax to flip the switch between work and indie hacking
• 4:30pm to 6pm - Work on side projects, write, etc. Flexibility to push this later into the night if I am feeling it.
Love "Eat The Frog" similar concept shared in Atomic Habits or The One Thing. Where the author referenced will power as a muscle in our mind, and it has limited energy each day.
This power diminishes out through the day so you should pick out the most important tasks, things that move the needle when the will power is the highest, else it'll always get delayed
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What do you read?
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PETA would be proud!
😂
Very similar to mine, however I usually don't drink tea.