a slow build

my daily routine for the past year

good morning

my mornings

Start at 6. I’ve tried as early as 5:15 and as late as 7:30.

But 6 works best because I can stay consistent with it.

My phone calls for me from across the room. I used to set multiple alarms, but now I give myself just one chance to wake up. I have to get out of bed to shut it off.

It’s interesting how the first thing we hear in the morning is a pulsing, terrifying, artificial noise, and the second thing we hear is absolute silence. Do you think noise breaks silence, or does silence break noise? I think this is a very important question and worth discussing with your friends.

For what it’s worth, I believe in the latter.

I open the blinds and am met with the dark world outside. Living in an apartment downtown, I can see a hundred windows in my view. Only one consistently has their lights on at 6. I wonder how they’d respond to my question above.

Despite what online influencers preach, there’s no moral value to waking up early. It’s simply something that I must do because I physically can’t stay up late. I envy the endurance night owls have and their ability to burn the midnight oil.

After some light movement, I feel awake enough to continue with my day. But when I'm especially tired and the warmth of my bed beckons, I think back on this excerpt from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations:

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?” So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands? You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.”

Stoics fanboy/fangirl over this quote, which, honestly, is kind of weird.¹ Don’t get me wrong, Aurelius had a super interesting worldview and there’s truth and power to his message. But maybe we shouldn’t base the meaning of our existence on a 2,000-year-old diary from a guy who was, let’s be honest, probably a little crazy? I mean, he was a Roman emperor, after all.

All this to say: the way I feel about Aurelius’ message fluctuates.

When I’m more awake, self-aware, and introspective, I treat it like satire—it could easily replace the Pledge of Allegiance. Heck, I know from my economics degree that increased worker productivity reduces inflationary pressure, so maybe the Fed needs to start having kids memorize this in grade school. Let’s bring down these prices.

But when I’m half-awake, fighting to find any reason to keep my eyes open… Aurelius does fire me up. Heck yeah, I’m a human being and it’s time to start doing things.

Anyways, back to my morning routine.

My lamps are scattered around three of the four corners of my room. I make my rounds turning each of them on before heading into the bathroom to take care of some boy business.

Once I'm freshened up, I walk to the kitchen, pour a mug of water, and microwave it for 60 seconds. Warm water is good for digestion and helps me stay focused—each sip forces me to pause and assess the temperature so I don't burn myself.

I guess you could call it grounding. I’ve found it difficult to incorporate meditation into my day so I’ll take what little spirituality I can find.

It’s about 6:15 now. I bring my warm water back to my room where I begin to read The Economist, my newspaper of choice. I’ve been subscribed to The Economist for over two years now and have gotten quite good at reading it fast. I often wonder about the purpose of news—why do we consume it and what’s the best way to stay informed? Could be a future article topic.

When the clock strikes 6:30, I mosey my way back to the kitchen to make coffee. I’m not a coffee snob, but I am a coffee fan. Sometime in the near(ish) future, I’ll probably get an espresso machine and do the whole insufferable routine. But for now, I use the Nespresso which my parents gifted me for my birthday a few months ago. It’s convenient and tastes great.

I continue to sip and read.

By 6:45 the caffeine has begun coursing through my veins and my brain switches from consumption to creation mode. My next hour is my most precious hour. 

This is when I write, draw, plan, code, and create.

One hour is an extremely frustrating block of time. Rarely do I get everything I want done. But a surprising amount can get achieved in a week.

If I end up doing anything worthwhile with my life, it will be the result of these small, seemingly insignificant blocks of time adding up.

the commute

what happens next

Depends on whether I’m working from home or commuting into the office.

But in general the same things go down.

I workout for about an hour, either before or after work. I’ve come to appreciate simple, compound exercise routines. At this point I’m not trying to get stronger—I just want to keep what I have and stay in good shape.

My full-time job demands my full attention for 8-10 hours a day. I recently rotated off a notoriously busy team, so I’m hopeful my workload will now lean closer to the 40-hour workweek I signed up for. But as a precaution, I still plan for a 10-hour workday.

It can be a challenge to fight through the post-lunch afternoon slump (which, by the way, is a perfectly normal thing to experience). An afternoon cup of coffee used to be a constant for me, but I’ve since replaced it with low-caffeine tea or decaf in recent months. My sleep has noticeably improved as a result.

My coworkers like to grumble about our company's return-to-work guidelines, which encourage 2-3 days of in-office attendance per week. I see this as a classic example of how people’s minds search for something to complain about when there’s nothing else significantly wrong in their lives. Maybe I’m being harsh. But both working in-person and remotely have their pros and cons.

I enjoy going into the office because the commute gives me a reason to walk, listen to music, and catch up on podcasts. It’s also fun working with people in person. But I don’t enjoy how late I get back, nor the fact that I have to cough up $12 a day to cover my public transport.

I enjoy working from home because skipping the commute gives me more time to cook and focus on my hobbies after work. However, if I don't make a point to go for walks, I’m prone to spending the whole day indoors which makes me feel quite gross.

hard to tell, but every blue-ish screen is watching the debate

my nights

Officially start with dinner, around 8pm. I like to call friends and family while I eat, but if there’s no one to talk to, I’ll watch some TV. Right now I’m watching Succession.

After wiping down the counters, storing any leftovers, and putting away dishes, I hop into the shower to clean up.

I’m recovering from my fourth knee surgery and have been trying to take better care of myself. One way I do that is by stretching every night and using a TENS unit when I’m feeling up for it. I’ve noticed a huge difference in my flexibility and cramping since incorporating just ten minutes of light recovery into my nights.

I sort of let myself do whatever in the last hour of my evening. Some nights I’ll turn on the Dodger game in the background while I read. If I’m feeling aromatic, I’ll light a candle or get the essential oil mister flowing. Last week was cool because I noticed that almost every unit across from me was watching the Harris-Trump debate.

But 10pm is my hard stop, after which I turn off all screens. I set my phone on my desk across the room, and bring a small stack of reading materials over to my bed. I alternate between reading a physical book, an eBook off my Kindle, or this week’s issue of the New Yorker. Pretty much anything without blue light is fair game.

If things go smoothly, I'll have dozed off by 11pm.

it’s a slow build

Toward many things. As monotonous as it sounds, I enjoy the routine.

But there are many nights where I wish I had more time. The difficulty of doing anything consistently on top of working a full time job is that I’m limited to these small chunks throughout the day. And so I must succumb to the greater powers of consistency and trust in the law of compounding results.

Kobe has a lot of memorable quotes on the slow build. Here’s one of my favorites:

“Those times when you get up early and you work hard, those times when you stay up late and you work hard, those times when you don’t feel like working, you’re too tired, you don’t want to push yourself, but you do it anyway. That is actually the dream. That’s the dream. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.”

I’ll admit, I haven’t been in the best mood these past few weeks—I keep beating myself over not having achieved more. Kobe’s words feel hollow at the moment. I hear and understand, but my heart refuses to accept them.

I'm still learning to balance feeling content with the work I've accomplished while staying hungry for more.

I don’t consider my life a grind, because my life isn’t hard. More has been handed to me than I could ever have wished for.

And so instead of grinding, I slowly build.

In a few years, I’ll look back on this routine with nostalgia.

Hopefully, I was doing mostly the right things.

1. I can say this because I used to be deep in the Stoic world