The concept of "paying myself first" helps me prepare for a productive day
For those interested in finance & investing, the concept might be familiar. By 'paying yourself first' once you receive the monthly salary, you ensure that you cover your expenses, you use a portion of the money for savings/investments and you are free to use the spare money as you like.
I have found this that the concept of 'paying myself first' works great for planning out my day and staying productive.
I try to have as many things that help me go through the day as possible before getting to work. That includes sleeping well, eating healthy, learn new things that I want to learn. It is only when I have those cover I allow myself to get to work.
My current routine looks like this:
- wake up, tidy up bed , wash myself, prepare for the day
- have coffee + something light (like a homemade protein bar) while reading a book
- exercise (either go for a walk or lifting at the gym – rotate them each day)
- shower
- breakfast
- contribute online in communities/dms/mails/twitter/etc
- lunch
- focused coding for about 4 hours (with breaks/pomodoro)
- plan for next day
Still experimenting every now and then changings bits but this seems to be working well for me.
Thanks for sharing! Do you consider #6 as part of "paying yourself", or is that work for you?
Also, that's a lot of stuff before breakfast. Early riser or late breakfast?
#6 is something that motivates me to do more work. I am very active in the Android community. Having worked as an android dev for 10 years makes contributing really easy. I enjoy talking about android & contributing is fairly easy for me. It's like 'cheating' in a way as I get to create a lot of content for others while it refuels me.
Re breakfast, I am an early riser. You are right that it is not really breakfast as it doesn't break the night fast, but it is a term people are most accustomed to.
Makes sense. Thanks again for sharing your routine, I'm always interested in how people structure their day. My day has a lot of the same elements and structure as yours, main difference is I do coding in the morning when I'm most fresh and marketing/social in the afternoons when I'm more tired. And then my exercise is usually late afternoon or right before dinner.
Same since I quit my full time job, it definitely leaves more time for reading, sport...
I also introduced little things as daily gratitude, pay attention to drink more water, allocate more time to play guitar, etc.
It's super important to make your mental and physical health a priority.
I steal the idea of contributing online even if I don't have a clear idea yet. Maybe open source contributions, I don't know...
That's an interesting concept.
I find that I do the same too, except I spread out the "paying of myself" throughout the day instead of one lump sum at the beginning.
I love my breaks. 😄
I really like this idea, but it's a bit hard to implement for me as I'm working full time. Ideally, I'd like to spend the whole morning "paying myself", and start work in the afternoon, but I've got to work for like 6 hours at least... still trying to figure it out, but it's definitely something I've been thinking about.
I would do something similar while working a 9to5:
Wake up early, wash myself, get ready
Coffee + book
Gym/exercise
Shower
One hour of coding
9 to 5
Plan for the next day
This helped me mentally too. If something didn't go great in my 9to5, I would have already progressed on my own stuff so it wasn't a big deal