My everyday life (routine)

Complience with the regime: 77%.

Without routine, you can skip many important things and lose your discipline and motivation. I split my working day into core chunks, and I follow them every day. If you don’t control routine someone will control it for you.

Try to increase Dophamine through your daily routine, natural sources of dopamine:

• exercise;
• protein;
• reduce saturated fat;
• support gut health;
• sunlight;
• regular sleep;
• meditation;
• music.

Here is high-level diagram of my routine:

1. Wake up

• Go easy after wake-up, get (5-10mins) natural light in eyes within 1 hour of waking up.
• Washing my face with cold water and brush teeth.
• Drink a glass of coffee.
• Prepare workspace, fewer distractions improve my productivity.
• Put devices on charger - daily (phone, tablet, big headphones), weekly (e-reader, small headphones).
• Planning my day with Taskwarrior.
• 35 minutes of run session.
• Take a shower with cold water (at least in the end).

2. Work session

• Remove devices from charging if required, connect tokens.
• Disable distractions (dnd), prepare water, breath deeply and start. There was numerious times when I get some notification, which I won’t read now…
• Set “Working” music playlist.
• Warmup a little with easy tasks, then go to most important ones.
• Focus on main tasks, go from hard to easy or important to less important.
• Limit timing for tasks, to avoid go too deep, we can always go back and refactor/improve features.
• Take at least one 10–15 minutes break in this session.
• Drink more water to stay hydrated.
• Completeing this working session give me good emotional state.
• Pain is rewareded with pleasure, don’t be afraid to do something booring but really useful.

3. Dinner

• Slowly eat good meal, give time to food digestion.
• Walk a little-bit.
• This is brainless time, don’t try to do something important.
• After ~1.5 I’m usually falling into microsleep (max 30 minutes).

4. Post-work session

Closing gaps, review my work and commit it, connecting with my team, and prepare me to the next day.

5. After-work session and training

Dinner time. I get some rest and recovery time. Maybe it’s good time for tea or some other drink with small amount of food.

I like to get some time to recover my mind. I’ll watch something or read something. But I’m not spending too much time on it. Full relax activity will be later.

After relax its good time to my physical exercise plan, with tracking my progress and results, and get rest some time to recover.

6. Learn something new

This chunk is starting somewhere in the evening, when I get second wind. I learn according to learning techniques. I also mix learning and practice in one session.

One trick to get into learning mode is start and end this session with spaced repetition.

7. Relax

I may do full relax activity, like reading, watching movies, playing games, etc. Here important factor - I need to reset before additional braint activity, so don’t do something really energy consuming here.

8. Sleep

Sleep is key of productivity, synchronize with circadian rhytm clocks.

Don’t forget about yourself and don’t try to make longer your day (this is bad idea). Try to start sleep maximum at 00:00 (with some preparations before), breath deeply and keep thinking about something good.

Flashcards

Which natural dopamine boosters you know?
Exercise, protein, sunlight, sleep, meditation, music, gut health, less saturated fat.

First 3 tasks after waking up?
Get natural light, wash face/teeth, drink water.

Components of morning exercise?
35-min run + cold shower

Key principles for productive work session?
Remove distractions with DND mode, hard tasks first, take breaks, stay hydrated.

Main purpose of dinner break?
Proper digestion and mental reset.

Best time to start sleep?
Before 00:00 (ideal before 23:00) with preparation time.

How to start learning session?
Begin with spaced repetition when second wind hits.