I thought it might be fun to walk you through my daily routine as a blogger/freelancer. I actually don’t assign specific hours or times to specific tasks. You know, some freelancers designate a big block of time to “answering emails” or “working on client projects”, etc. Not me. I’m constantly alternating what I’m doing. So in a give three hour period, I might do all of these things:
- Code a design for a client
- Write a blog post
- Check in on Twitter
- Scan Feedly
- Write another blog post
- Answer emails
- Respond to blog comments
You get the idea. I don’t set aside blocks of time; I just work on whatever I feel like in that moment, which often results in a lot of hopping around. But I can give you a vague outline of my activities and generally when they occur.
10:30 – Good morning
I wake up LATE. And it’s AMAZING!
Most days I wake up between 10am and 10:30am, but sometimes if I’ve been up late reading I don’t wake up until 11 or 11:30!
Then, many days I spend an additional 30 minutes laying in bed, checking things on my phone. This is usually when I go through my Feedly app and read some blog posts, scan the subject lines on my emails, and check in on Twitter.
Once I’ve finally pulled myself out of bed, I head to the computer (still in my PJs) and check up on the world more thoroughly. I go through some of my emails that are easier/quicker to deal with and I do a bit more on Twitter. If any support tickets need answering, I make sure to get those done.
After about 30-60 minutes (depending on what time I finally woke up) I start to think about food.
11:45 – Food, you’re delicious
I actually don’t eat breakfast. I think it’s because I wake up so late anyway and I’m usually not hungry IMMEDIATELY. I get hungry about an hour after waking up, but by that time it’s almost noon—lunch time.
Some people might say my lunch routine is boring and predictable, but I love it! I’ll touch over all the possibilities:
Eat in (not that often)
Sometimes I eat lunch at home. This doesn’t happen that often. But occasionally I make myself eggs or a bagel and grab a cup of hot chocolate.
Go to Costa and eat in there
I do this a lot, but only when Costa isn’t super busy. I don’t like to eat in when it’s packed with people and I have to scramble to find a table. But when it’s nice and quiet I love to bring my Kindle and sit in at Costa. I get a delicious hot chocolate and one of their wraps to eat.
Food to go
Whenever I’m not doing one of the above, I grab something from Starbucks or Costa to go. Usually a hot chocolate (or a Frappuccino on a hot day!) and a panini/wrap.
12:30 – Time to work!
Once I’ve had food in me, I can actually dig into the serious stuff. I spend time answering the more difficult emails (usually the ones from clients or those that require I look into a coding issue). I also work on various coding projects. Also bundled in this time frame is blogging. If I have ideas for posts, now is usually when I write them.
This period is also when I start any household tasks, like running the dishwasher or putting on a load of laundry.
3:00 – Time for the gym!
My gym time is 3:00. I usually only go Monday, Wednesday, Friday—at least that’s what it’s been lately since I’ve been doing Couch to 5K (which is a three day per week program). I go to the gym for thirty minutes, so I usually get back at 3:30, then I stretch and spend time cooling down.
For the next 30-60 minutes I usually pick up where I left off before the gym and continue working/blogging.
4:30 – Bath time
I always have a bath at around 4:30pm. Most days I bring my Kindle with me and get some reading in while I’m there!
After the bath, it’s more working/blogging until my husband gets home at around 6:30.
7:00 – Time to cook
I usually start cooking dinner when my husband is in the shower. We usually end up eating around 7:30 or 8, depending on when I started and what we’re having.
If my husband and I have something we want to watch together (movie or TV show) we watch it with dinner. We’ll get on the sofa with our plates and watch something from his PC. If we don’t have something we both want to watch, then we usually watch our own things. My husband usually watches a short 20 minute episode of something and I usually watch Chasing Life or pick an old episode of 24 to watch while I eat.
After dinner
After dinner is epic lounging time. My husband usually likes to game so he’ll usually be playing Team Fortress 2, or lately we’ve been playing Diablo III together. But if we’re not doing something together, I can usually be found doing one of three things:
- I plop down on the sofa and read
- I play a game of my own
- Continue my combination of working/blogging
Bedtime around 11
My husband and I usually go to bed around 11pm. Every now and then I stay up a bit later and read, but that doesn’t actually happen too often!
Rinse and repeat!
Some people might think my routine is boring or not very adventurous… but I love it! I always look forward to waking up and starting a new day. I also really appreciate how relaxed and stress-free my days are. I am extremely productive in the hours that I’m working, but it doesn’t feel like work. It feels like I’m just having fun and messing around with code and designs.
Sounds like a perfect day to me :p
😀
Wow, girl I’m so envious of your routine! One of the perks of freelancing, I guess. My work hours are a little weird(12.30 pm to 9.30 pm) so I wake up late too. Once I’m up I get a little blogging/reading done depending on my mood. After 1 hour of commuting(BLEH) it’s straight to work.
At work, I do manage to squeeze in some reading time. And then it’s back home and straight to bed! Exciting stuff, I know. 😛
P.S.-You can cook?? That pasta looks DELISH. XD
Eeks, 1 hour commute isn’t fun. 🙁 When I was in school last year I had to do a pretty bad commute like that as well.
I can’t really cook. 🙁 The photos I took are the two meals I can make that look somewhat impressive. My husband and I semi-invented the one on the right. We heavily modified a pinterest recipe we found.
But most of my cooking is like: get this sauce from a jar, heat it up, put it on pasta. Not very impressive, sadly!
One of the things I don’t look forward to when I’m going to start working is waking up early. I’m really someone who needs to get enough sleep and waking up early is not something I enjoy :p I’m definitely jealous of that part from your daily routine :D!
Ugh yeah, I hate waking up early. Even when I get 9 hours of sleep (so I go to bed really early), I’m STILL cranky when I wake up early. I think it has nothing to do with a lack of sleep for me and 100% to do with my body just saying, “I know it’s early and I don’t like it, even though I got plenty of sleep.”
Oh my gosh, that sounds like the most perfect routine to me. You get to do everything that you love including your job and get paid for it. Your work ethic is amazing (I know you’re wicked fast at responding to support tickets) yet you live fairly stress free. It sounds divine! I hope it’s always like this for you.
Good luck keeping that up if/when you have kids. =) I was always a night owl (I would still define myself that way), and it intensified when I worked night shift. But over the last 3 months I’ve started getting up at 5am simply because I need the ME time in the morning before the kiddos take over my day. And it’s actually not as bad as I thought it would be! If I put my alarm on the other side of the room, I’m golden. But don’t talk to me for the first 15-20 minutes. Haha!
Lovely schedule, very envious over here 🙂 I’m up and moving by 6am, but starting next week that’s getting pushed back to 5:15am so I have time to get things going before I have to get kids up and ready for school sigh….
I am jealous of your routine. I don’t get to sleep in until 10:30 anymore and eat in more than eat out (3 kids will do that to you). I would love spending all day working from home on my blog and freelance work. Maybe once the youngest starts school. Till then, my days are all about my boys, their school and activities, and my home. This week I have been preparing for my first Travel the World in Books Readathon that I am co-hosting. I have been excited about it and lots of blogging to do. I love it! Loving the Tweak Me theme I bought! Just need to update my social media pictures for my new design!
Wait… is this your work day routine? You are working between 12:30 and 3:00 and can get everything done? 0_o #TellMeYourSecret
Well I also work in the evenings too. 😛
Still! I’m impressed and envious of your lifestyle! I also work home and try to force myself to get up before 8 so I can work “enough” and have time to do things I like. You really managed your business great! 🙂 It’s so cool to have so much time to read and write!
Yeah I think a huge part of it is that I get pretty good passive income from my premade themes and plugins. After I make those, they don’t require any work other than answering support tickets now and then.
So outside of that, I can just take on a few custom projects, but not too many to stress me out. 🙂
Thanks for sharing your routine. It sounds wonderful. I am still trying to establish exercise into my routine. I am up early, usually around 7 AM and love to hit the computer, blogging. After about 10 or 11 AM – I don’t have a routine yet. I am working on it though.
We have some similarities in our routines…except for the time frame. After 30 years of a job that required I get up around 5 a.m., my sleeping until 7:00 is “sleeping in.” LOL
I am good in the mornings, anyway, so I like getting an early start and so I head for the computer immediately, also still in PJs.
E-mails, blogging, some writing….and if I go out later, I sometimes head to Barnes & Noble in my neighborhood and have coffee and read.
Routines are lovely, aren’t they? Thanks for sharing yours.
I’d seriously kill for a routine like that. Mine’s not too bad, but it requires waking up at 6:oo am every morning so I can get done everything I want/need to do. But even then, I can’t get EVERYTHING done because I work/commute about 9.5 out of my 16-17 waking hours. Let’s trade? ;D
I’m so jealous of your laid-back routine.
I wake up at 6 a.m. to get ready for school, skip breakfast, and get in the car at 6:40. School starts at 7:35 and ends at 2:55. My after school routine varies. Sometimes I stay after school to work on the newspaper or attend lit mag meetings. During the spring sports season, I have tennis practice and matches. Once I get home, it’s homework time. Although, I try to squeeze in a half-hour nap or read if I get home early enough. I spend a lot of time doing homework. I finish my work anywhere between 10:30 and midnight. On particularly horrible days, I’m awake until 1 a.m. The late night study sessions happen mostly during tennis season. I eat at my desk and take breaks every 2 hours to check Bloglovin’ and Twitter or write blog posts. I also shower sometime during that time frame. I read a little before bed, but most of my reading is done on weekends.
I love that you love what you do. That doesn’t happen with most people. I love how your day sounds. It’s relaxed but productive.
This sounds like my ideal day if you replace all the coding stuff with writing stuff. Which is to say, IT SOUNDS AWESOME. 😀 It’s important to be happy and do something for a living that makes you happy.
Blergh. I’ve always wanted to freelance (writing and marketing) for the flexibility of choosing your own projects and hours and working with a diverse set of clients. I have heard that you can make a lot more freelancing than working in house. But seeing your day laid out makes me want it even more!
Good luck with the freelancing goal! I bet you could make it happen. 🙂
I don’t know about boring – how about PERFECT! It’s not so different from mine, right now, except that I need a job badly so I can make some money when grad school is over. But I’ll enjoy it while I can. I would love for that to be my permanent position though – with writing instead of design work of course 🙂
I’m rather jealous…your life sounds awesome! I would LOVE to work from home. I hate having to get up early and go to work 🙁
I don’t know how you can go to the gym at 3…I can’t stand going in the middle of the day! I have to do it as soon as I wake up and get it out of the way or I don’t go at all. I also don’t have the balls to take my Kindle with me to the bath XD
I just can’t go to the gym at any other time. I can’t go before I eat, but then after I eat I settle into my comfy work routine so I can’t bring myself to go then… I think 3pm is just my perfect “I’ve been working, it’s time for a break” time.
I didn’t take my Kindle into the bath for the LONGEST time. Then I just randomly started doing it and so far no incidents.. lol.