Ask IH: What's your typical day like?

1. Wake up between 7 am and 9 am. I've experimented with waking up at 5 but it drastically screws up your social life (which I'm doing my best to preserve while in startup mode)

2. I take a lunch break around 1-2 pm. Usually watching tv series (I know, I know..)

3. Work full-time until 6-7 pm. I'm doing my best to finish before 7 pm, otherwise, I burn out pretty fast.

4. Gym until 8-9 pm.

5. In bed around 11-12pm.

From Monday - Friday

1. Wake up around 8AM

2. Go to my full time government job from 8AM - 5PM.

3. Go to the gym/eat from 5PM - 7PM and read a book / read and answer emails on my phone, think, and brainstorm while working out. Alternatively, I go to happy hour with my coworkers.

4. From 7PM on, go to a coworking space to hack on my side hustle until 1AM.

When I have a hard deadline I need to meet for my side hustle, I skip the 5 - 7 gym/dinner and go straight to the coworking space to work until 1 or 2AM.

Saturday and Sunday: I spend about 12 hours in the coworking space for my side hustle.

This schedule is obviously not sustainable. I've kept at this schedule for the past 10 months when I started bootstrapping my startup. I want to get my startup to a point where it's profitable or getting funded by investors so I can quit my full time job and have a more balanced work schedule. I'm optimistic that it will happen if I continue to put in the work. The fact that I develop the product myself and see progress everyday keeps me going. I also regularly talk to potential users of my app for extra encouragement and insight on what features are needed for the beta and what features can wait until the next release.

Here's what I've been doing that's been helpful.

• 7AM: Wake up, make breakfast, drink coffee

• 8-9AM: Check Trello, email and prioritize day's deliverables

• 9-12PM: Work through deliverables

• 12-1PM: Lunch and rest

• 1PM-5PM: Work again

• 6PM-8PM: Go to BJJ/gym (Wendler's routine) and get my workout in

• 8PM-10PM: Dinner and relax

• 11PM: Sleep

Hey Josh!

Usually I wake up around 8:30 and get to work on my day job, spending any breaks on updating the app I am working on.

At lunch time I eat at my desk and spend the whole hour working on administrative stuff that doesn't require much thinking - replying to emails, accounting stuff, updating Asana and Todoist with the latest tasks, and building a marketing plan.

After work, around 430 or 5, I spend about 3 hours hanging out, helping out with dinner, playing with the baby, and doing household chores.

Once baby goes to bed, around 8 or 830, its time to start developing some more - though usually I'd have the laptop and work from the couch, watching a show and knocking out smaller tasks.

Around 12 I start winding down and play either PS4 or the Switch for a bit before bed.

On the weekends I am usually out doing stuff all day, and spend longer developing at night without the TV

06:30: wake up, shower/dressed, help 7 yr old son get ready for school.

Breakfast/coffee then drop son off at 07:45.

Drive 30 mins to work.

08:15 - 16:55 - Full time web dev in office. Try go for 15 minute walk at lunchtime if weather permitting (I'm in England - it rains a lot).

16:55 - 30 mins back to pick son up from after school club.

17:30 - 19:30 - Home, dinner/wash up/ housework, time with wife/son.

19:30 - 20:15 - Take son to bed/storytime.

20:15 - 23:30 - try and work on side project if I have time, or work overtime.

23:30 - 00:00 - Wind down / shower / bed.

Notes

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This is usual for weekdays. Weekends I usually look after my son whilst wife is at work.

Winding down consists of listening to the same piece of music every night. Brain knows its sleep time when I do this.

No wonder I'm not making much progress on my side projects!

Hey Josh!

Here how a typical day looks like:

• Wake up between 7.30 and 8.30am

• glass of water, shower with last 1min/30sec of chilled water (best hack ever to kickstart your morning)

• 30min meditation, breakfast

• 9-9.30am get on it! turn on my phone from flight mode and start looking at messages and start replying emails

• 1-1.30pm lunch break, generally prepare something healthy home

• 2-2.30pm back on the rollercoaster, will be spending most of the afternoon in meetings, calls and hustling

• 7.30-8pm call it a day and go for some yoga, calisthenics, dancing classes or meeting up with friends depending on the day.

• 8-10pm dinner time, either before or after activities

• 11pm start winding down, screens off time, put mobile on flight mode and ideally grab a book

• 11.30-12pm bedtime

Since a lot of my work involves meeting and talking to people I've set "no meetings days" to advance on work. I almost never take meetings on Mondays or Friday's, unless is not possible to schedule it differently. I also avoid meetings in the morning, unless is breakfast so I can advance on work.

I generally work either Saturday or Sunday half a day, but sometime just take it easy another day of the week if I see I'm not productive.

@joshmanders

Here's my usual routine

Wake up at 6

Play football or jog till 7:30am

Get ready for work and have breakfast

Be at work by 9am

Work till 1pm

Have lunch from 1pm till 1:30pm

Have a 20min power

Go back to office at 2pm

Take a break at 4pm

Finish work at 6pm

Spend time with family/friends till 10pm

Sleep around 11pm.

Notes:

1.Doing exercise in the morning helps alot with morning productivity

2.If you live in a hot country, the afternoon naps helps the body re-energize.

3.Seven to eight hours of sleep definitely helps the body.

0700 - Wakeup, walk dog

0800 - Come home, get ready for work/feed dog

0900 - Arrive at work (or start WFH)

1200-1300 - Go for a lunch walk, eat, or study

1700/1730 - Finish up

1800 - Walk dog in the evening

1930 - Jiu jitsu practice

2100 - Dinner, study, hang out with partner.

2230/2330 - In bed, reading or talking

Wake up between 7 and 9, hit the gym for about an hour and a half, breakfast, shower/get dressed, start work at 10am and work till around 2, lunch break for about an hour, start working again, coffee break anywhere between 3-4:30 for 15 mins, work more till around 6 -7:30, dinner, relax and wind down or do any chores/admin tasks, bed by 11-12:30 probably

I work for a Start-up and I am the CTO for another.

Usual Day:

7:00 - 7: 30 am Wake Up

8:00 am Arrive at work - Get some breakfast

8:10 am Tackle small bugs or finish anything left from the day before

9: 30 am Company wide Stand-Up

9: 40 am Product Meeting

• Code / Meetings

12: 00 pm Lunch

• Code / Meetings

2: 30 pm Gym

• Code / Meetings

6: 00 pm Leave Work

6: 30 pm Arrive Home - Eat Snack

6: 45 pm Work on Other Startup

• Code

8:00 pm Eat Dinner

• Code / Meetings

11:00 pm Get into bed (read / video games)

12:00 am Sleep

Weekend like my work days just that I work for my side hustle.

Some days I feel really burned from the day job so I might head to sleep earlier or work on very simple things for the side startup.

Just to give someone a different view, my day usually goes hand in hand with what I do the next day. Right now I'm in Hawaii for two months so my schedule looks like this:

Wake up 330am: drink 2 glasses of water, get dressed and bike to co-working space (uber if it rains, I don't own a car)

Start work at 4am: Eat my biggest, ugliest frog before jumping on slack or checking email

Approx. 5am (depending how long it took the first task): slack/email check on team members, see if any fires need to be put out and identifying next tasks

630am: focused work (30 min pomodoros) at least 2 by 8am

8am-12pm: code, work-related stuff like billing, task management whatever needs to be done. (this is an 8 hour cutoff for me)

12pm: beach, surf, workout, do something active

approx. 3pm: check emails again, 15 min minimum on a side-project

430pm: schedule the biggest, ugliest frog to handle the next morning, put out clothes for next morning, check email last time

5pm: enjoy quality time

9pm: bedtime

Here are a couple of rules I follow:

1. Always eat that frog (good book that's allowed me to maintain my schedule to reach my goals)

2. Check emails only twice after my 8 hours are up. I do not get notifications to my phone of emails, have to check implicitly.

3. Drink 2 glasses of water first thing every morning. This I can't understate enough on helping with my health.

4. Try to improve in some way by 1% every day: mentally, physcially, on a project, knowledge.

5. Find time to read a book at least 15 minutes every day.

6. Meet someone new every day and listen to their story.

Hope this helps someone.

working on getting this schedule working:

7am - rum or a gym

8:30 breakfast high fat low carb

9:00 do most banal items on my todo list

-- journal

1:00 lunch

4:30 dinner & walk

9:30 getting ready to sleep

      short run

      shower

in between heavy lifting coding and meetings

Wakeup at 6 am ,then train MMA from 7-8.30 am .

9 am - 5 pm work ( freelancing or working on my projects) i have small break in between for lunch or quick nap

6 pm -11 pm random activities

11 pm sleep

1. Wake up between 6 am and 9am, depending on when the kids wake up. I take sleep when I can get it

2. Spend 30 minutes to an hour getting kids ready for the day, breakfast made, medicine, etc.

3. I spend the remaining morning checking email, twitter, generally delaying starting my day.

4. I take a lunch break around 12pm (or whenever my oldest starts pestering me for lunch). I end up eating about 45 minutes later.

5. I try hard to start focusing around 2pm. If the kids are being too loud, I head to a coffee shop.

6. Do a bit of actual focused work for a few hours before I get worn out from all of it. Half my days this is contract work which pays the bills, the other half I try and do personal project work (blog posts, video recordings, product dev).

7. Around 6:30 my wife/kids starts asking if I'm done working. At that point I do kids evening/bedtime routine until about 9:30, when I do dishes/clean up on a good day, or veg out playing computer and drinking beer on any other day.

8. Go to bed around midnight, as I try and stretch my peaceful night as long as I can go before starting the day again.

Here's my routine:

Morning:

• Wake up everyday at 5am

• 30min / 40min of calisthenic / stretch

• 20 min of meditation

• 30 min writing on my technical blog

• A bit of cleaning / random stuff

• I'm at work at 8

Evening:

• I finish work around 5pm, I'm at home at 5h30 / 6h00

• 10 to 50 min of sport (running one day on two)

• 1 to 2 hours working on side projects / learning new stuff (try to learn Computer Science right now) / other projects

• I go to bed at 10pm

Sunday Morning: Bouldering.

The week end is free, I either work more on my projects or see people. I like to do things during the day, I don't like to go to bar / club at night. That's how I can keep waking up at 5.

Keep in mind that my routine is the result of some experimentation to improve my overall mood and energy. I like doing so, that's why I'm doing it. It's that simple.