Paint me your weekly/daily "grind picture"

Joe

Joe

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What does all of your work schedules usually look like?

Do you get up early and jump straight into your work?
Do you work late into the night?
How many hours do you normally average a day?
How many hours of sleep do you average?
Do you take naps?
Do you do big 8 hour stints without even getting up? Or do you do many blocks of work throughout the day?
Do you mix up different types of tasks to avoid fatigue?
Etc.

If you're balling now and working 4 hours a week (on a beach like Tim Ferris says you should), tell us how it was like in the beginning instead.

Interested to hear!
 
I'm really undisciplined right now and probably need to whip myself into shape here.

Mornings:
I get up and check emails, post on BuSo, and do my quick cycle of sites I like to check. I'm drinking coffee at this point, then I jump in the shower, get dressed, and take the dog for his walk. I blow a solid hour here. My entire life was "wake up at the last minute and scramble for elementary, high school, work, college, work, appointments." Now that I have the luxury I take the first hour easy. It's not efficient, maybe I'll get over it soon.

Nights:
It depends. Getting up early is crucial and I've not been doing it. The reason is that my brain wants to exit work-mode around 9 PM, so if I'm getting up at 1 PM, and blowing an hour, then that leaves me 7 hours to work. Most often I plow through it, sometimes till the wee hours of the AM. I also cave in a lot too. It really depends on what I'm doing. Dev work keeps me energized. Dealing with content is boring, and boredom is my main enemy.

"Per Days":
No naps. I work around 8 hours a day on average if you count weekends, where I pick up extra slack of around 4-6 hours per day. This is pathetic and I need to not be complacent. I used to pull down 10-12 a day, every day when I had to, so I know it's possible. I take micro-breaks to peek in on BuSo or various sites that update frequently enough. Maybe 10-15 minutes here or there, usually about twice per work day. Sometimes I make a food run too.

Techniques:
I used to be real good about Pomodoros, switching tasks to stay energized and touch everything that needs touching. Lately I've just been plowing at content non-stop, which blows, but it's where I need to expand for the moment. Switching tasks is crucial for me. I used to have hourly blocks laid out for 5 days a week, and weekends were "choose your own adventure" blocks where I picked up slack or did what the muse told me. I see the light at the end of the tunnel of this content phase though. Probably going to get back to cycling through things once I can de-prioritize content again.
 
I by no means recommend doing things the way I do them. They're simply what work for me at this point in time. I'll mostly copy Ryuzaki's format for simplicity sake.

Mornings:
First Hour - Emails, news, and generally orienting myself for the day ahead. Whatever lists I make to plan out the day/week are as simple and concise as possible.

I find, for myself at least, the longer and more complex a list becomes, the more likely I am to deviate from it. A few bullet points is good enough for me, as I know what's right, what's the best use of my time, and I know what needs to be done.

Daytime:
You'd think I'd have more for this. The easiest way I can explain it I'll just call "stream of productiveness", in the same vein as "stream of consciousness". By this point, I have those few simple bullet points, I know what needs to be done, and I just do it without regard to much else. I minimize meetings wherever possible, because most are a waste of time. I work through lunches, because at this point in the day, food is merely a device to fuel the grind.

Nights:
6-8hrs, almost every night, of education and experimentation. If I'm not actively learning something new or something old in greater depth, I'm busy applying it. This is a boring life, but what I feel is necessary for me. Most nights, it's 4 to maybe 6hrs of sleep, but usually 4. Just beware, if you regularly go with only ~4hrs of sleep, most people are eventually going to have some sort of collapse from this. You will suffer physically and mentally, at least to some degree. Typically, once or a few times a month, on a weekend I'll catch up on some sleep. It's good to do this and refresh yourself once in awhile.

Others are more disciplined, and can manage to have amazing success while still keeping their careers and lives to a "9-5". That's just not for me. When I'm actively working on something, all else comes a distant second. There's no just "shutting it off" for me.

Techniques:
  • 5 minute "meetings": For most things, "5 minutes" is about all I find I really need. Maybe sometimes it's 10 or 15, but the point is, having frequent 30-60 minute meetings I find to be a complete and utter waste of time. Less time talking, more time doing. I just need to get on the same page with appropriate stake holders / team members, address core concerns, hash out a plan of action, and get to it!
  • "Overview mode": Periodically, I find that it helps me to take a step back and reassess. Considering my stream of productiveness work style, it is way too easy to get caught up in the middle of things with a very narrow focus, and lose sight of the big picture. Ever so often I force myself to take a step back, check my KPI's, project status, analytics, or whatever to keep myself on track. If I need to, I'll spend an hour doing this, especially if I've been working on something extremely complex and far-reaching.

Gotta run. Time to put out some fires apparently.
 
Mornings: Always your mind will be slump at your first minutes of waking up you need to raise its focus, the way I do it is by exercising for 15 min, I don't see or watch anything whether it's news or emails... I make sure my mind stay clean, without any emotions clouding its focus.

Daytime: This Chinese proverb can easily explain how my day goes,百折不挠 "perseverance pays off in the end."
- I do what I find working for me taking a five minute brake, I stretch maybe run outside the house and back again to work (take about 15 - 30 minutes each day)

-Working harder doesn't always get you good results, so you need to be smarter, cut the stuff that waste your time, remove it from your list or if it has some importance keep it to the last day of the week (it depends on your personal week some people work the whole week some work until Friday) that's when usually people get productive, because you know you want to get out so you do your best to end your work load faster.

- You should at least an hour or two each week to talk with someone, small talk helps your mind to get a bit of joy and enthusiasm, that makes it fresh, help it to stay energetic, "avoid useless talk". (knowing people, connecting, and communicating)

-Deadlines, you don't respect those, that means you don't respect yourself.

-Perfectionism will not grant you results.

-If you work only 8 hours daily, that's not enough, I work 12, to make sure my hard work will pay off.

Nights: I start leaning something new, checking what I've bookmarked, taking notes, scraping useless advices or point of views.

I sleep early and wake up early each day back when I was a kid my father made me woke up every day at 5 to help him in arranging and stocking his merchandise.

Entertainment: I play chess, and I some time go with my girlfriend hang out, you know I'm human like you :tongue:.

Techniques:
-Hard work: Everyone will say to you, you need to work harder. the harder you work,the luckier you'll be.
-Drinking water a lot: that increases the oxygen goes to your brain, not only your lung needs oxygen but also your brain both of them expand when they receive more oxygen.
-Training, you body and brain at least 15 mins a day.
-Read as much as you can 5 books a month can increase your stamina of handling daily work.
-Breaks for each hour, between 5-10 mins (eat, drink water or something, maybe read a couple of pages from a book you want to finish, take a walk out your house, and make sure you don't exceed 10 minutes mark.
 
I was going to post a thread similar to this, you beat me to the punch. Here's a usual day for me:

7:00 - Wake up, stretch, check my phone and the weather
7:30 - Start working on my most creative tasks. Often a freelance job.
10:00 - Finish the creative tasks and respond to emails.
10:30 - Work on the next article for my site
12:30 - Eat my first meal of the day and take sometime for myself. Go on a walk, talk to my girl, watch some TV.
13:30 - Finish the article I started before lunch, edit it and create or order graphics.
15:30 - Work on promotion and outreach of that article if posted, or the previous article.
17:00 - Most days I take some time to brainstorm future content, outreach plans etc.
18:00 - Break for my second meal of the day, often go to the gym or a run shortly after.
20:00 - By this time my productivity is low. I'll plan my calendar, respond to emails and freelancers.
23:00 - Get into bed, usually I sleep for 6-7 hours but it's sporadic.

Totaling that up it's around 9-10 hours of "work" per day. Some days less, some days more. Some days I'm productive 100% of the time, some days are closer to 50%. That's life. I'm not counting any time I spend in bed thinking about work or reading or watching videos.

I do work close to 7 days a week most weeks though. This is a normal weekday but even on weekends I average around 4-5 hours of work per day. Average week is probably around 60 - 70 hours of "work".

I should probably do more... but I'm at like 1,400 calories / day... that's my excuse at least. But seriously, I'm slowly increasing it as it becomes habitual and my dedication levels up.
 
06:00 wake up, have a cup of tea and prepare my kids and wife's packed lunches, iron shirts etc.
07:00 wake up wife and kids.
08:00 Travel to work/school
08:30 Do the day job
15:00 Leave work early (take this time as my lunch break) and pick up wife from work and travel home.
15:30 Log back on and do the 9-to-5 until 18:00
18:00 Go running with the wife.
19:00 Start to prepare the evening meals.
20:00 Meals done, do the washing up, tidy etc.
20:30 Collapse in the chair and watch brain-numbing TV until...
23:30 Bed

Yes... I know that I am whining, that I do a lot for my family and that I should be working on my business between 20:30 and 23:30 but I am normally f**ked by that point...

On Sunday I did a little keyword research, started writing an article but got distracted and only wrote 2 paragraphs.. :smile:

I am really envious of you guys who have "space" and "time" to do your thing...
 
Wake up around 9:30AM or so ... groom ...then drift for about an hour.

Remainder of the day: Work on projects until 1-2AM.

My current projects: producing my first short movie, graphics for my clients, website development, keep learning about the world of PCC targeting ...fascinating stuff!

For some reason or another I'm super creative between 10:30PM - 1-2AM.

The next day rinse & repeat.

I've tried really hard to find the Off switch ...it ain't there to be found.
 
LiamGallagher said:
That's my case too. I don't know why but my brain likes to go loco around midnight. Ton of ideas, motivation and creativity. Stupid brain.
Click to expand...
Same here, my sleep schedule used to be so screwed because of it.

I'd wake up at like 2pm then sit on the computer til 5-7am

Wanted to kill myself sometimes lol
 
MORNING:

Wake up at 5am if I go to the gym which is eod. No gym days I wake up at 6am and I love this one more hour of sleep... After gym or when I have days without it, I will have a strong black coffee and a lot of water.

Then I'm going to work on my clients things.

NOON:

At around 12pm I have my first food and another coffee or green tea. At around 1pm I'm going back to my clients.

AFTERNOON:

Around 4pm I'm done with clients and I'm switching to my own things. I have like two more green teas during that time, and maybe some fast snack.

EVENING:

After 6pm I'm having time with my better half, we have some proper meal and usually after 2h or so I'm back to my own things.

NIGHT:

I will stay up to 11-12 doing my own things. And that's all.

But during the day I have to also go out with my dog, sometimes do some small shopping, and do other things that have to be done, just regular "life" things. Weekends are different, because my better half is free of job during Saturday and Sunday we try to spent as much time as possible doing better things than work. Funny thing is, unlike others here I can't sleep up to 9am-10am for example, I might have just 4 hours of sleep and will wake up at around 6 am no matter what. I might be tired and feel like shit but I just can't stay any longer in bed. Strange. And no naps.
 
I start the week at 9am on Monday. I then work for 20 hours on 1 business. Then I work for 10 hours on another business. By Wednesday, I'm usually at the bar by 7pm. From the rest of the week, I'm basically out drinking from errr... 10pm or 11pm until 6am.

I also go for runs too around the old town -- gotta burn all those calories lol.

I'm starting a new business where I film amateur models. That'll be great since the Recruitment Fund would go to me going out to bars, clubs, and strip clubs to scout for models. It'll also go to nice dinners with models, which I really like.

So... Ughh... yeah... my life is nice :smile:
 
I know @CCarter is a productivity hacking nut like I am so I hope he posts in here.

5:40AM: wake up and go to the gym for an hour, been using a new app called BAU5 to maximize strength, endurance, and lean muscle training.

~7AM: protein shake, shower, shave, and walk the dogs

8AM: head into work, depending on which day depends on which office. I live strategically between the companies so it's roughly ~25 miles to either which takes on average 50 mins depending on traffic.

9AM: grab a small coffee, open up my laptop and plan out my day. Mondays I have a standing dev planning meeting at 10am, other days I might have a call at 9am. Otherwise this time is reserved for building out my my list of high priority items for the day. I use tools like Momentumm dash for personal lists and asana for work related stuff.

==From here until the end of the day, there is variability depending on the day of the week as I split time between companies. It's also worth mentioning that phone calls often get stitched throughout my days==

10AM: Management meeting or getting started on emails.

11AM: Client prospecting and/or checking in on revenue/SEO reporting

NOON: team meeting

1PM: lunch (never alone)

2:30PM: Post lunch writing, 1,000 words minimum

4PM: Pipeline review, pre-deployment review, or client strategy meeting

5PM: Check-in on remote resources / lead volume for publishing business

6PM: Try to leave the office and head home, sometimes this doesn't happen until 7-8PM.

7PM: Get home, eat dinner with the wife, hang out with the dogs, and probably have a glass of wine.

11PM: Bed
 
05.30 AM: Get out of bed, fill water bottle with iced water, head upstairs to my office and take a look at the weather forecasts, global news and overnight emails.

05.45 AM: Shit, shower and then breakfast.
06.00 AM: Work on my priority items for the day, this is dictated by a plan I put together for 10 minutes most Sundays.

11.00 AM: Go for a power walk, or forest run and then return to base and lift some iron, cold shower. This is followed by a healthy minimal lunch.

12.00PM: Back to work, normally I reserve the afternoon for dealing with customers, Google, Bing and Facebook agency bods, by this point my productivity spell is over, so I use it for communicating to the outside world.

16.00: wrap things up for the day.


In the evening after family time and any other tasks, I'll typically have a sauna and then hit my hot tub under the stars with a glass of wine before I hit the hay!


Minimalist approach, but it works!
 
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