My Typical Workday Schedule

Most of my days are pretty much the same. I enjoy my routine and it helps me stay productive. There are times when I wish I would be more rigorous in accomplishing even more, but I’m getting better at accepting things as they are.

[MorningPrep]

• Wake up about 4:45am. Emily has a job that requires she’s in the office a smidge after 5am. So by extension, I’m waking up early. Plus, the cats tend to be loud in the morning.
• Browse Mastodon and Discord to see what’s new.
• Actually get out of bed between 5:30am and 6:00am.
• Brush my teeth, drink some water.
• Exercise for 30 minutes. This will either be light strength training outside in the garage, going on a weighted walk, yoga or if I’m feeling behind on the day I’ll skip it altogether.
• Shower, hair, contacts. I used to never do my hair because it was short, but it’s now become a regular thing for me.
• Make breakfast. This is either yogurt, fruit, granola with a protein shake or two fried eggs, over medium, with friend onions and softened, sliced grape tomatoes on toast (ideally homemade sourdough) with a protein shake.
• At this point, it’s probably 7:30am. I’ll make some English or Irish black tea and go to my desk.
• The next hour or two is dedicated to Open Source Projects. It’s usually a lot of emails and messages being sent rather than writing code. These days it’s a lot of Djangonaut Space, DEFNA and DjangoCon US. I may also have a weekly call with an old friend who is in the same space that goes in this block too.

[Morning]

• At 8:30am, I’ll begin my paid work-day.
• At 9am, I have my daily stand-up with my development team or weekly check-in with the entire company.
• At 10:30 am, Roland starts getting vocal and sits in my lap.
• At 11am, the cat feeder goes off and peace reigns again in the office.
• I eat my lunch at 11:30am nearly every day. It’s always something reheated.
• I’ll watch a TV show, a talk or read a book while I eat.
• When I’m done, I’ll make some coffee and do the dishes.
• At 12:30pm, I return to my desk.

[Afternoon]

• From 12:30pm on, I’ll usually get my coding tasks done.
• If I have Open Source meetings, those get slotted in as necessary.
• At 2pm, Emily typically comes back home. We catch up on our days, work, various events, and I’ll tell her about how the cats were weird today.
• Depending on when I started and how much Open Source work I did, I’ll end my day around 5pm.

[Evening]

• At 5pm to 5:15pm, I’ll go prep dinner for Emily and I. 90% of the time it’s reheated as we meal-prep on Sundays.
• For dinner, we watch Pardon The Interruption
• When the horn sounds, Roland lets me know it’s time to play fetch. For about 15-20 minutes, I’ll flick Roland’s orange fuzzball down the hall and he’ll fetch it. I’ll toss Beef’s springs in the other direction so he doesn’t intimidate Roland. During this time, Emily will have the news on.
• At 6pm, Emily will go clean the litter boxes and I’ll do the dishes.
• From 6:30pm to 8pm, it’s either watch sports/TV, do work, do open source work. This varies on what both Emily and I have on our dockets for that week, how much stress we’re under and what deadlines are coming up.
• On Friday’s, we’ll drink wine together to end the evening
• At 8pm or a little after, we get ready for bed. Brush our teeth, close up the office, shut the blinds, clean any dishes from snacking.
• Emily is pretty quick to sleep. I’m less so. From 8:30pm to 9:30pm, I’ll watch a TV show, write outlines for projects/blog posts on my phone or answer questions on the Django Discord server.
• At 9:30pm I’ll decide it’s time to attempt to sleep and put on either Gravity Falls or The Owl House, turn my phone face down near my head and listen to the show until I fall asleep.