A day in the life - pre-baby #2
I always love reading about other people’s routines, and I think it’s worth the time to document what my current day looks like prior to having to go through the routine-shattering first year of a new baby. I remember the mental gymnastics required of figuring out what life was going to look like after Judah was born and I went back to work. Now that we’ve been in our current family state for 2+ years, and I’ve been at the same job for nearly 2 years we’re on kind of a wash/rinse/repeat sort of schedule.
Here’s what a typical weekday looks like for us currently:
4:45am - My alarm wakes me up and I spend 5-10 minutes waking up and checking our revenue from the previous day and making sure there are no urgent emails that I need to attend to. I keep my phone in airplane mode overnight as well, so if there are any Slacks from our off-shore development team I’ll take time to address those right away.
5am - I’m up and usually doing one of three things: (1) meditating - I use the headspace app and do my best to not feel like a fraud or a fake, (2) yoga - I use the Gaia app on my phone and use their “beginner” series of yoga classes to move my body in the morning, or (3) exercise - I use the Sweat app and try to complete the “arms” and “legs” workouts each week and then go for 2 long walks with Judah and the dog on the weekend. Some days I never make it past the email phase, and that’s okay - we’re going for progress not perfection.
5:30am - I wrap up my me time and get in the shower to get ready for the day.
6:30am - I’m done getting ready and I go wake up my husband before heading into the kitchen to prep breakfast and lunch for myself, my husband, and Judah. I also will pull anything together that needs to be prepped for dinner (aka, pulling meat out of the freezer, setting up the slow cooker, etc). I feed the dog and let her out, pack my bag for the day, load the car, and prep Judah’s milk for when I wake him up. I also make myself an iced coffee and take my prenatal vitamins and my iron supplement that my doctor has asked that I take after my last bloodwork came back with low iron.
7:15am - I get Judah up, give him his bottle, get him dressed for the day, and we normally read 2-3 books together in his cozy rocker before we truly get rolling. This is one of my favorite parts of the day.
7:40am - we’re all out the door. I take Judah to daycare and drop him off and then pop back over to our office (which is less than a 1/2 mile away!).
8:00am - depending on the day I either have a full day packed with calls or I have a day completely blocked from meetings for me to do real work to move our business forward. I only open my calendar to calls with clients on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Friday afternoons - this has been life-changing. When I first started at this company I would leave my calendar wide open and people could pick and choose whatever 30 minute increment suited them best. This lead to complete chaos for me ever getting into flow state with my work and left me feeling ragged and defeated at the end of each day. By giving myself 50% of my week with no scheduled meetings, I have built the time that I need to actually run our business rather than just talk about running it.
On a day where I have calls, I generally have one call every hour (I ask people to book 45 minute slots and then I build in a 15 minute buffer for me to be able to send them a follow up email RIGHT after our call). I am usually booked for at least 6 of the 8 slots available, so my day is just a consistent grind of getting on calls, talking through our platform with clients, and working to get people engaged with our business. On these days, I try to just ignore email if possible and just add things to my to-do list for the next day.
On a day where I don’t have calls, I usually have one “big” project that needs to have progress get made on it - testing new code that’s about to be released, building a new set of emails for clients to be able to use with their patients, building an announcement for new products/features available on the platform, or working on reporting for investors. In addition, I have about 10-15 items that are easy, but time-consuming that need to get done. I will try to either delegate these to someone else on the team (but have to provide thorough instructions about how to accomplish the goal), or I will use these tasks as mental breaks from the “big” project I’m working on. Sometimes repetitive tasks can help get you over the hump with something that requires more brain power.
One quick note on my work days in general - I don’t usually leave the office at all during the day, I honestly don’t even leave my desk all that much. I feel like I am sprinting through the 8 hour day because there is always so much to get done. I know this isn’t the healthiest approach long-term, but I also don’t mind it. I like being busy but knowing the every single thing I’m doing is absolutely crucial for our business.
4pm - this rolls around before I even know it and generally I am terrible about leaving right at 4 (despite my diatribe about putting myself into Do Not Disturb from 4-7pm) I’m usually scurrying out between 4:10-4:20pm and driving home (which only takes about 10 minutes). My husband picks up Judah after work on most days and I go directly home to let the dog out (who comes to work with us), and get dinner started. Judah and Renato get home around 4:45pm and I usually have dinner in full swing at that point. I am obsessed with easy dinners. I love to cook, and I used to love to cook these elaborate meals with tons of prep time, special sauces to prepare, components to chop, etc. Now, I’ve optimized our weekly meal plan around what I can sort of set and forget that will still taste good. This means a lot of slow cooker meals, one pan meals, things that I put together and then throw in the oven for 30 minutes (hello quiche and roasted veggies!). I save the more elaborate meals for the weekends when I have more time to spend with the family.
5:30pm - we are generally sitting down to eat sometime between 5-5:30pm depending on what I’m making. We do order Uber Eats or some other sort of takeout usually one weeknight each week - usually it’s on Wednesdays when I take Judah to swim lessons after work and Renato takes Ami to tutoring. However, now that I’m out of my first trimester (and no longer woozy 24/7), I can usually whip up a decent meal 4 weeknights each week. We sit together at our dining room table and eat. Some nights this consists of us dealing with Judah screaming about how he doesn’t like it and he wants cheese (usually on nights when he has not napped at daycare), and other nights, it’s a super pleasant time for all of us to spend together and catch up.
6pm - we’re normally wrapped up with dinner at this point and my husband and I trade off nights in terms of who does dishes vs who gives Judah a bath and does bedtime. Last night was my husband’s turn for dishes, so he clears the table, puts all the leftovers away, does all the dishes from dinner (and the ones that we bring home from work and daycare), and feeds the dog her dinner. I will take Judah and Ami back out into the living room where we can play cars, build legos, read books, whatever they want to do for the next 45 minutes before I get Judah’s bath started.
6:45pm - I start Judah’s bath and spend about 2 minutes getting him clean. He then spends the next 10-15 minutes playing with his plethora of bath toys. Around 7pm I will get him out and dry him off and do the rest of his night time routine - pjs, teeth brushing, cleaning his ears, and getting his room ready. Then he’ll go out and get his milk and say goodnight to everyone else. We then cuddle in his rocking chair while he drinks his milk. After he drinks his milk, I get to spend about 15 minutes of quality time with him - singing songs, talking to each other, or cuddling if he’s tired - before I put him down for the night. 99 out of 100 nights, once he’s down for the night he’s out. He may have been a terrible sleeper for the first year of his life, but he is a champ now.
7:20pm - I make my way back out to the living room, grab my computer, and check emails/revenue stats from when I left the office 3 hours ago. I’ll also check my phone for any calls I missed while it was on do not disturb. I try to do about 2 hours of work most nights (although recently my motivation has been failing me as my body gets more and more uncomfortable). Usually, the work I’m doing is more administrative in nature - returning emails/phone calls, doing tedious manual work, scheduling things for the following day, etc. I don’t try to do the deep work that requires real focus during this time - I’m just too exhausted. Also, we’re normally watching something on Netflix in the background during this time, so I’m also somewhat distracted.
9:30pm - I head back to our room to wash my face, brush my teeth, and take my nightly magnesium, probiotic, and immunity boosting supplements. I then lay day in bed, set my alarm, turn my phone to airplane mode, and read a book until I fall asleep. I’m normally out by about 10pm which is perfect.
Looking at this day, I see that there is very little time for myself - having that 30-45 minutes in the morning each day that is just for me is critical for me not feeling like a cranky person all day and I notice it on days that I miss it. I feel like my life right now is just one huge sprinting marathon and I know that it’s not sustainable forever. That being said, i also have never felt happier than I do right now in my life. Certainly there are things that I would like to change - would I like to be able to take a nice vacation in the summer with my family? Yes, but currently that would mean 2/5ths of our company would be out, so it’s just not doable. My life won’t always look like this, so I just need to embrace it for what it is right now. We’re about to have to reconfigure and adjust to a whole new baby being added to the mix. So for the next year, I would imagine that it will be total chaos, but then we’ll come out the other side, and the unimportant things will fall off our plates, and we’ll rebalance. Change is hard and threatening and scary, but it’s also necessary, and without it none of the best things in life would come our way.