My Workday Routine
I put out a poll on my Instagram to see what “behind the scenes” routine you wanted to see from my day, and my workday routine was the winner.
The Work Day Schedule:
Communications
At 9am-ish, I check all the communication I get in many places: DMs, Voxer, Slack, and emails. I check all my messages, respond to clients on Voxer, respond to any relevant Slack messages, and catch up on emails first thing. I generally try and post on social media early in the day so I can catch my northern hemisphere followers, and so I don’t lose steam later (see more under the ‘what I’ve come to expect’ section)
Focus time
If I don’t have calls, I’ll move on to focus time. This involves enticing myself with coffee, focus playlists on Spotify and the promise of a walk in the sun after I’m done. Any workshops, presentations, email writing, and chunky work falls here. I often set a Pomodoro timer, do 25 minutes of work, then check messages or jump up and stretch for five minutes.
Meetings
Meeting with clients is one of my favourite things, but I’ll relate this to those of you who work in corporate jobs and have a lot of meetings.
The day I decided meetings and talking to people were a central part of my job was the day I stopped complaining about being in back-to-back meetings. I use Google’s speedy meetings to ensure I have little pockets of time and schedule time to action things / send client follow-up notes and actions from the meetings right after if I can.
Closeout ritual
I have a more extended ritual for Fridays (reach out if you want me to share that!), but at the end of each day, I go through messages one more time, brain-dump anything on my mind and close the office door physically and mentally.
What I’ve come to expect:
My brain will try to talk me out of what I planned to do in focus time. “We can do that later in the week”, “You’re feeling a bit tired today; do something easier”, etc. This is where the coffee/music/walks come in. I’ve come to expect this, so I now offer myself a nice environment or rewards and remind my brain how good we’ll feel when we’re done.
I’m more focused from Mon–Wed, so I try and do a lot of my heavy lifting work earlier in the week. Thursday and Friday, I save for admin and just enjoy that Friday feeling. I’ve learnt this about myself through time tracking if you also want to understand your own rhythms more!
I hope that helps – let me know what takeaways you got from this, and have a great week!
