[Tracking Every Minute]-Day 3 – Peak Routine
Is it possible that I’ve established a new routine by day 3?
I started this challenge of tracking every minute of each day to avoid losing track of what I am doing with my time. Day 1 was my son’s birthday and a Sunday. It felt odd tracking how I spent every minute of a Sunday, but it got me warmed up for the next day.
Day 2 was a traditional “work” day. While I was working from a new location, the structure of my day was closer to my traditional day.
On Day 3, it is a continuation of this more traditional schedule.
Woke up at 6:00 and was able to get a good half hour of reading and coffee in before I started waking up my children and cooking them breakfast and moving them around to school.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s update, I started working from home again, so the schedule is a bit different. Usually, I would drop the kids off and get in an hour or so of work before hitting a workout. My office was literally located above my gym. Since I gave up the office suite, I have a bit of a buffer between dropping off my kids and working out.
In the future I might pack my laptop to take advantage of this time, but I hadn’t really given this time much thought, so I went to the coffee shop and opened my kindle app and read for a bit. I had a few items on the shopping list that I picked up before heading into the gym. Then hit the gym from 9:30 to 11:00.
Tracking every minute “in spirit”
I realize there are levels to each and every game that we play. In this time tracking game that I am playing, I’ve chosen to track every minute in spirit.
This challenge was brought about by thinking about some of my goals and then realizing that I literally spent no time working towards them.
Am I busy, sure.
I also know that I could have accomplished these goals if I was disciplined and committed to working towards them for an hour a day. Or even 30 minutes a day. More important than the exact amount of time is the consistent effort and awareness.
So while tracking time now, I am not currently getting into extremely granular detail. I spend a lot of time driving my kids around, but you’ll notice I don’t include a driving or car entry. I just add that time to the scheduled event.
This actually has two benefits for me. First, it makes it easier to track, which is most important. Secondly, time stuck in the car with my kids is time with my kids, so why not make the most of it.
The beginning of consistency
For the second day in a row, I am hitting my main “deep work” block of the day at around the same time. But first, as I do on my days, I’ll have a communication block in front of it where I will go through my email and handle any correspondence.
A quick win moves me into the work block, where I try to remain as focused as possible on the one big task. I hit the communication block from 11:00 to 11:30 and then the deep work block from 11:30 to 1:30.
Lunch at 1:30 and then a post meal walk with the dogs at 2:00.
I had an hour between the walk and heading out to my daughters basketball game, which I chose to use on a fun side project from 2:30 to 3:30.
From there it’s out to my daughters basketball game, which was from 3:30 to 5:30.
Then we head home. Since I got home earlier and my wife was with my other daughter at her soccer game I went ahead and cooked dinner. Taco Tuesday!
5:30 to 7:00 I cook a mean taco dinner.
Kids and wife took a while to get home from their events, so I took advantage of the gap to get some more reading in. 7:00 – 8:00 I read some more.
Once kids and wife got home at 8:00 we ate our Taco Tuesday feast.
After dinner and clean up, I was able to get back on to the computer and work on the side project for a few hours.
Main Takeaways
- I felt good after finishing and reviewing the day before. I wanted to repeat that feeling.
- I really enjoy sneaking in reading whenever I can
- I am enjoying working from home.
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