I think there isn’t a person, who hasn’t sung the Manic Monday by Bangles. Yesterday it was Monday, May 11th. A normal day. Though was it really a normal day? What’s so special about normal days? Let me tell you what I think and at the end, I have a short task for you as well. So dig in, just after you finish listening…
Sometimes it’s worth it to look at a normal day and see think about it a biit. Below, you can see the list of activities I did today. I had majority of those planned out from yesterday evening, when I did my weekly review.
Activity list:
- 06:00 Wake up.
- Drink a glass of water with lemon.
- Toilet.
- Teeth.
- Warm-up.
- Prepare aero-press coffee.
- Pack food.
- Drive to work, listen to audiobook.
- 06:30 Get to work.
- Get coffee #2.
- Prepare breakfast smoothie.
- Unpack & plug in laptop.
- Open the paper organizer, review the daily tasks.
- Eat the frog – preparing a website for soon-to-launch HR-related study.
- 07:30 Colleagues coming in.
- Ear-plugs on, rock-radio on Spotify on.
- Get a coffee with colleagues.
- Dive in to finish the frog.
- 11:00 Lunch.
- Post-lunch coffee.
- Inbox clean-up.
- Client calls – status update, meeting arrangement.
- 15:20 Leaving for gym, listen to audiobook.
- 16:00 Gym
- Meeting with pro-bono coaching client
- Go home, listen to audiobook.
- Dinner.
- Start monhtlong lean-canvas preparation.
- Play Counter-strike with my brother.
- Review daily activity list above, mental not to do this tomorrow as well.
- Prepare this post.
- 22:00 Go sleep.
Why do I mention normal day
The interesting thing, about seeing the list the way you see it now, is to review, which of the activities have the biggest contribution to important areas:
I spent major part of my day dealing with a word-press website for one of our upcoming DEVELOR projects. This will in the future possibly bring new clients for our training & consulting business, so it’s a long-term time-investment. The major short-term value comes from the 1.5 hours of follow-up on the client requests and calling on clients to meet.
Second interesting point is how much of the day is built by habits and routines:
The whole morning between the alarm sound until I sit down in front of my laptop at the office is one big routine. The warm-up is part of this routing which I picked-up last month. The whole gym going is one big routine. The audiobook listening is a habit I’m just building. The “go sleep at 10 PM” is a habit as well.
Normal days build up life. Pay attention to what they look like, what they contribute to and what habits you let into them.