A Day In My Life – What My Daily Routine Looks Like

Before my wife died, about 20 months ago now, we didn’t really have a typical day, or a set routine.

In fact, each day was pretty random, which was ironic because my wife claimed to hate randomness.

For example:

• We went to bed anywhere from 3:00 am to as late as 8:00 am.
• We got up anywhere from four to seven hours after that (but usually sooner rather than later).
• We worked on our various businesses for most of the day, but there was no plan of action – we might have gone to bed with an idea of what we’d be doing the next day, but come morning, that plan was usually cast aside in favour of some new idea or the latest “shiny object”. I long since lost count of the projects we started that were abandoned well before completion.
• We rarely ate “lunch”, but if we did, it might be anywhere from noon to 6:00 pm.
• We ate dinner anywhere from 11:00 pm to 3:00 am, except if it was after midnight, I typically didn’t eat because having food that late when I was that tired made me feel nauseated.

Apart from the fact that we were both permanently tired from that crazy schedule (if that’s even the right word), nothing felt like it was working.

I tried on several occasions to pull bedtime forward to a more reasonable hour, but it only ever lasted a short while before it got pushed back out again.

Since her death, I have tried to create a more predictable routine, so this is what my day looks like these days – and it is indeed most days, not just occasionally:

1. I get up somewhere between 6:00 am and 7:00 am – but I have an alarm set for 8:30 am just in case I oversleep (which almost never happens).
2. Once I wake up, and I know this is not recommended (but I’m working on it), I grab my phone and check emails, more as an initial filter (e.g. archiving ones I don’t need to worry about and deleting junk) than trying to deal with any of them.
3. I then spend a few minutes doing some memory training, which I’ve been doing for over a decade now.
4. Next, I catch up on a few online games I play (e.g. Scrabble).
5. Then, I have a quick check on Facebook, mainly for notifications but I do have a scroll down my newsfeed.
6. By then, it’s usually time for a bathroom visit, after which I go outside to my back porch and watch a video or two while I cycle for anywhere from one to four miles on my exercise bike.
7. After that, it’s off to the kitchen to clean up after the previous night’s dinner, and to do any other food-related jobs (e.g. putting meat in the slow cooker, baking bread, making sure I’ve got anything out of the freezer I will need for meals later that day).
8. By 7:30 am to 8:30 am, I’m ready to start work, so I power up my laptops (I have one for entertainment purposes – music, mainly – and one for work).
9. The first thing I do is publish my daily haiku. (This, and some flash fiction, is more or less the only writing I do these days, and I do it because I enjoy it.)
10. Next, I go through emails, trying to deal with all (or most) of the ones that need action. This included customer support messages, orders that need processing, and any other admin-type stuff.
11. Once that’s out of the way, I do my daily free-writing / journalling on the 750 Words site. Again, I do this for my own pleasure, although some of what I create there does get turned into articles on this site.
12. Finally, and it’s usually no later than 10:00 am by now, I write an article either for this site or on Medium. This takes anywhere from one to three hours, depending on what I choose to write about that day and how long the article ends up being.
13. Then, on most days, I will publish one or two articles and send out an email to my subscriber list to let them know there is new content on the site.
14. After that, I create a pin for Pinterest for each article that I publish.
15. What I do next depends on the time – I may do some more writing, I may fool around on Facebook for a while, I may do some additional marketing activities to promote this site, I may create additional products for my Etsy stores (DealioHound and MuggedByDesign) and I will, of course, catch up with emails.
16. Several days a week, I will go outside to see my USPS carrier to get packages and maybe have a chat, if they have time, since these are the only people I see face to face nowadays.
17. At 2:00 pm, I check one of my other businesses for last-minute orders, as I have a deadline of 2:30 pm if they are to ship that same day (and this business is time-critical for my customers.)
18. Then it will be lunch time, which I try to eat as soon after 2:00 pm as I can. During lunch, I will usually watch a 30-minute TV show.
19. After I’ve eaten, I go and give my doggies their lunch-time snack – leftovers from my own lunch and a few other tidbits.
20. In the afternoon, I try to kick back and relax these days, particularly at the moment, which is the height of summer and too hot for me. This typically entails watching a movie (or two), writing haiku, playing games on my phone, reading, household chores, and maybe even taking a nap.
21. I try to eat my dinner by 8:30 pm – which I think is a bit later than it should be, but I’m working on that too – and I’ll watch a 45-minute show while I do that.
22. After I’ve eaten, I like to read some more, which may be fiction or non-fiction, or even a bit of both.
23. At 10:00 pm (currently, because I want to bring this forward a bit), I go and give my doggies their supper. Again, this is some of my leftovers together with a bit of soup and a few other ingredients. (I do free-feeding, so food is available to them 24 x 7, so their lunch and supper are more like bonus snacks.)
24. Finally, I’ll watch another half-hour show (preferably comedy) while I have a bedtime drink (green tea in the warmer months and a herbal infusion during the cooler months) before turning in, which I like to do by midnight.

This schedule is pretty consistent – even at weekends (although I might take a day or two off from article writing), and it works, both for me and my dogs.

For me, it lets me plan out my day, I get to eat and sleep at regular and reasonable times, and I get most of my work done before noon, since I have always been a morning person.

For my dogs, who prefer a routine, it means there are no surprises, and eating at predictable times is better for their overall health.

The one thing I don’t like about this routine – is the fact that it is a routine.

While I accept that having routines can be good for you, mentally and from a productivity perspective, I, unlike my late wife, have always enjoyed a degree of randomness in my life.

So, within the limited confines of my lifestyle (i.e. I never go anywhere), I do try to add some spontaneity wherever I can – and that’s largely what my afternoons are for.

What was the point of giving you all these details about my daily life?

Well, it’s this – having routines is a great way to increase productivity.

I do have a good idea of what I’ll be doing the next day when I go to bed (I use a task manager to help me with this), which is something many experts recommend doing.

It also removes doubt about what you should be doing, and reduces the number of decisions you need to make.

I used to work many more hours per day than I do now – but it was less focused, and it was, quite frankly, too much.

It was often the case that my wife wasn’t working, because her arthritis limited how much time she could use her computer for, while I was, so she’d put the TV on for a show or movie.

I kept half an eye on the television, but I frequently literally lost the plot because I felt it was more important to not make mistakes with my work than to follow the shows 100%.

That meant I had little leisure time (e.g. to read or write), and I feel that had a negative impact on my overall health and satisfaction.

The good news it that my work / non-work balance is much better these days, and I do feel better for it.

Of course, for many people who have a regular job, this is less of an issue because their day is sort of mapped out for them all the time – projects to work on, with deadlines, meetings to attend, set lunch breaks, the travelling to and from work, etc.

But if you work for yourself, or are even at home all day for any reason, then establishing a routine that works for you (and anybody else who may be at home with you, including children and pets), is worth doing.

For me, I’m not saying I want to be a slave to the clock – but there is an order in which I try to do things, even though they may not always take the same amount of time.

As I said, some articles take longer to write and publish than others, I cannot control how many emails I need to deal with each day, and so on.

And some people might prefer an even more rigid routine, which is fine, because the there is no single answer to this – whatever is best for you is what you should do, and that may take a while to figure out, with some fine-tuning required

To me, though, the key is to develop some sort of routine.