Since “How are you so productive?” comes up so often, I’m gonna answer in this post. It’s due to massive time management and privilege.

So here’s the brutal honest truth about what my days look like.

But please hear me: A tight morning routine doesn’t make you a genius. Copying the morning routine of a Fortune 500 CEO is foolish. You have to figure out what works for you and that’s gonna be an ongoing process.

Early Morning

I used to wake up and jump onto my computer, before breakfast even, responding to emails that came in while I slept until my inbox was tamed.

But I was so fried and hungry at that point by all the urgency I’d created that I couldn’t do any deep thinking the rest of the day.

Midway through the pandemic, after I realized that YES I successfully replicated my favorite restaurant cocktail at home but OMG having one every day is not doing me any favors, I started prioritizing my morning time for myself. Did the pandemic make you rethink some aspects of your day-to-day too?

Now I need about 3 hours before I start work.
10 minutes of laying in bed looking at my phone, of course.
A healthy breakfast.
Time to relax with a coffee and a book.
Lots of deep stretching and physical therapy to keep the organs and muscles in the right places.
A regular meditation routine.
Plenty of opportunities to catch casual time with my teen.
Therapy.
Wordle.
Breakfast with a friend.
Volunteering.

I literally put my life before my work.

Late Morning

I front load my work hours so that the things that require my most creative energies happen first: developing new talks, inventing things, and writing.

It takes every ounce of my self control to avoid my inbox first thing. Answering email makes you feel like you’re being productive but in reality, the big stuff that will move your business ahead and really requires your brain isn’t in your inbox.

This means that when I’m in a heavy content creation period, it might take me a few days to get back to all my unread messages and I continually work on being at peace with that.

Late morning is when I produce.

I end my most productive time but listing out my next steps on the project at hand and then scheduling time in my calendar when I’ll get back to them. Which means there’s always a plan for how I’m going to use these hours.

I also schedule my virtual workshops to start mid-morning and run through mid-afternoon.

Afternoon

By 2pm my brain is spent. It takes me twice as long to write. So why even bother?

This is the time to email. Plot schemes with colleagues. Hold the rest of the webinar. Book travel.

Afternoons are my availability for meetings. I use Calendly for scheduling and set up my availability for noon-4pm, with 15 minute breaks between meetings so I’m never running from one call to the next. I can always pee. That’s self care, ya know.

This time is also scheduled, weeks in advance.

When I’m reallllllly lucky the work load and the weather will align and I’ll just leave for the afternoon. Bike rides, kayak adventures, hikes. These are good days.

Evening

Why does it take so much effort to be healthy? I don’t know about y’all but meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking, and exercise take up so. much. time.

I get around 90 minutes to relax and I wish I could tell you that I use that time to enrich myself further with a good book but usually it’s TV.

Bed by 10.

For short spells in the past, I’ve used my evenings to develop new business ideas and turn them into a reality. Weekends, too. Realistically, for me, I can only do that for a few months at a time before it burns me out.

Except Fridays

Fridays I sleep in an extra half hour and feel like such a little rebel.

No meetings. No workshops. No travel.

Fridays are for building the empire.

This is when I develop my marketing. Write my newsletters (hiiiiii!). Manage my money. And think through my big business bold moves.

It’s creativity time and that’s often best done out of the office. So I’ll talk through a business idea with a friend on a walk in the woods. Or take my nascent new workshop idea into the kayak.

Though I’ve said I have a 4-day work week, the honest truth is that my brain thinks about work during life time and plans out my life during work time and there’s probably no such thing as a work-life divide for an entrepreneur. The best I’ve come up with is this work-life integration.

Except a Travel Day

In the weeks when I’m on the road, my schedule changes dramatically. I’m up earlier. My time to relax and engage in extensive body work is massively condensed. I’m back to my old habits of answering emails over coffee while putting on alllll the makeup to get ready for a talk.

Workshop days are looooong – usually 8am until 4:30pm and then an evening of travel where, now that we have wifi on planes, I’m writing up another newsletter or answering emails at 9pm en route to my next workshop.

We overlook how much traveling to and from work IS STILL WORK.

Yes – I got to catch up with a friend for dinner when I was on the road. Afterward? Back to work.

I decided that packing and unpacking for work trips are STILL WORK so now I do that during my working hours, in my afternoons.

My Position Makes This Possible.

My kid is old enough that he needs less of my time.

I don’t have a husband that adds 7 hours of work to my week.

My parents don’t yet need my help.

The commute to my office is 15 steps.

I make enough money to afford an assistant and a cleaning service (or vice versa – they create the time for me to make more money).

The emphasis I put on my whole being keeps me sane and relaxed, which is the best scenario for your brain to be its most productive.

So how is this working for you? How have you organized your days to best fit your life? And what needs to be tweaked at some point to make your days work even better for you?