

Ask HN: What's a day in your life look like? - nazri1


======
Hytosys
Thanks for asking! For context, I live in Southern California.

I wake up some time in between 10 and 2.

The majority of my day is spent alternating between playing guitar, playing
Super Smash Bros., programming (work), learning (physics lately), and cooking.
Besides on occasion, I don't have the best ability to sit down and do one
thing for more than an hour at a time.

On most days, I walk downtown (about 40 minutes of walking daily) to eat,
shop, or just relax. Lately I've been packing lunch, getting high, and walking
to the park a few blocks away. It has a really awesome man-made pond that is
home to plenty of critters.

On some days, I lift weights or bodyweight train at home.

I work freelance (iOS/web dev) so I can pay rent.

I'm building a B2B web app with two other people who live across the country.
We have an hour long Skype call once a week.

I quit my bullshit 10am to 8pm startup job 10 months ago. I'm not making much
money yet, but as a 23-year-old with no kids I don't care. I'm healthy.

That was therapeutic!

~~~
feybay
If you don't mind me asking, how do you go about acquiring clients for the web
dev, and what rates do you charge? Thanks!

~~~
Hytosys
I don't mind you asking! I wish I could be of more help. I've had the same
"freelance boss" for the past 6 years. I've worked on a dozen different
projects with him; some were his own ideas, but most were for his various
clients. I met him through a friend who also worked freelance at the time.
This was back when iOS development was in huge demand, everyone thought they
had the killer app idea.

He was more than happy to hire a 17-year-old programmer for about $25/hr. I
now charge about $120/hr.

I have no clue how he gets most of his clients. I suppose I'm in a privileged
position.

------
decentrality
Wake up at an unknown point in the day or night, somewhere in the continental
United States or Central America.

Assess the situations my wife might have gotten into while I was sleeping and
do triage, or wake up gracefully.

Determine which emails and phone calls need a response and reply as briefly as
possible.

If we're going somewhere else, prepare the mobile lab for departure and get
under way. Otherwise enjoy wherever it is we are.

Connect with business partners and make any outstanding decisions required for
that time.

Connect with F/OSS collaborators and audit any outstanding bug reports or
feature requests.

Scout around the area with my wife, figuring out what about where we're
currently staying is worth coming back for.

Eat something in the local area or come back to the mobile base and make
something.

Assess situation of deliverables and code on most mission critical pieces due
soonest.

Unravel some visionary pieces coming in the mid/long term and discuss future
scenarios with advisors and agents.

Take on a large piece of code that needs to be written, or a large bug that
needs to be weeded out.

Make a campfire, have a beer... maybe cook something on the fire.

Watch a few episodes of something on Netflix with my wife... assuming 4G
access or WiFi in the location is stable enough.

Either turn in for the night/day or continue with more of whatever large
coding project I took on.

Periodically communicate with partners, collaborators, or clients passed to me
by agents managing contacts.

~~~
_almosnow
Is this like your dream day or your real day?

~~~
decentrality
I forgot to add Obsessively track HackerNews, GitHub, and StackOverflow

------
scarecrowbob
9-11 maybe wake up, sex, or not 10-11 check the internets 11-3 frantically
work on tasks that I should have started at 9a 2 or so : fry some potatoes and
eggs and eat them with avocados, cheese, and tortillas after lunch till 5 or 6
frantically work on tasks 11-sleep - check social media and write messages to
folks who might need what I do 6-8 goof off with my kids 6 maybe exercise 9-12
play a gig if one has been booked (usually only on Friday or Saturday) 12-5
play a gig (usually only on Sunday) 7-9 practice playing jazz with old people
(typically only one or two days a week) 9-12 drink some beer and practice new
programming techniques 2 or so go to sleep with my beautiful and talented
wife, sex, or not

~~~
gberger
Is this satire?

~~~
scarecrowbob
Naw, that's me writing in the 12-2 time frame when I get blitzed drunk with my
violinist wife and her pianist. Before going to bed. It will probably tip over
someday but I can say that it has been working for the last 5 years.

~~~
joshmn
What.

------
krat0sprakhar
Location: Kuwait

05:30 Wake up. Followed by an hour of coding / reading / follow-up of what I
left last night.

06:30 Shower, freshen up for work.

07:15 Cook breakfast, browse HN, pocket some articles for the ride to work.

07:45 Leave for office.

08:15 Arrive at office. Begin the day by checking emails.

08:30 Shuffle between meetings & coding. On a good day, I'm able to avoid
meetings until lunch.

12:00 Lunch time and hanging out at the proverbial water-cooler with
colleagues.

13:15 Meetings and hopefully some productive coding

17:15 Prepare to leave. Check email one last time and send off replies to
anything pending.

17:45 Leave for home.

18:30 Reach home. Order dinner, call parents.

19:30 Finish dinner while watching some TV show / talk on Youtube. Head out
for a walk / run

20:15 Get back from walk / run. Relax by listening to some music, IMing with
friends, watching few videos.

21:00 Start work on side-project or coursera course or blog post. Try to get a
couple of hours of productive work done.

23:00 Prepare to sleep.

------
hendzen
7:00 AM - Alarm goes off. get self out of bed, take phone, snooze alarm, go
back to sleep.

7:15 AM - Alarm goes off. turn on lights. squint until eyes acclimated to
light.

7:30 AM - Put on running clothes. Leave residence, embark on run.

8:00AM - Reenter apartment after ~3 mile run, take shower and get ready.

8:30AM - leave apartment again for work

9:00AM - arrive at work, get coffee & light breakfast

9:10-12:00 - most productive programming hours of the day

12:00 - 12:45 - lunch, either onsite or off depending on day

12:45 - 3PM - usually when I have meetings, if not in meetings then
programming

3-3:30 PM - afternoon break, have a snack, leave office for a bit and walk
around

3:30-6PM - more programming & meetings

6-7PM - leave office, go home, cook & eat dinner if I don't have dinner plans.

7-11PM - social life (dates, friends, etc.)

11PM-12AM - read a chapter of current book I am reading

12AM - bedtime

------
phamilton
6:30 wake up

7:00 drive to BART in walnut creek

7:15 park at Walnut Creek Bart

8:00 get off BART at Montgomery

8:05 arrive at office

8:05 - 9:00 grab breakfast, informally sync with Product Managers

9:00-10:40 code alone

10:40 standup meeting

11:00 - 12:00 informal design discussions with team mates, lots of white
boarding

12:00 - 1:00 grab lunch, play super smash brothers with colleagues

1:00 - 4:30 push changes to prod, review code, pair program

4:30 head to BART

4:35 head upstream on BART to civic center

4:45 catch BART from civic center (get a seat)

5:35 get off at Walnut creek

5:40 drive home

6:00 arrive home, eat, play with kids

7:00 kids bedtime, free time for parents (generally try to spend this
together)

9:00 go running

10:00 wife goes to bed, I'm less of a sleeper so I usual stay up another hour
or two working on side projects or sometimes just playing video games.

------
synunlimited
When I was on Co-op in Boston at a late stage start up my usual schedule
looked like

8am - 9:30am - Wake up and Skype long distance fiance as she gets ready for
class. Check emails, hipchat and social media. Push some bug fixes / product
updates and deploy.

9:30 am - Shower and get ready to head to work.

10 am - 10:15 am - Walk a mile to T (JFK/UMass)

10:15 am - 10:45 am - Take red line to MIT/Kendall

10:45 am - 11am - Walk 1 mile to the office (Could also take the green line
and walk a few steps but I enjoy the walk)

11am - 12:30pm - Email, push some more code, go over pull requests

12:30pm - 1pm - Lunch with co workers maybe longer if its a team lunch

1 pm - 2:30pm - code code code

2:30pm - 3:00pm - Meeting with tech lead if its a Monday

3pm - 7pm - code code code

7pm - 7:15pm - walk back to the T

7:15pm - 7:45pm - Red line

7:45pm - 8pm - Walk back to apartment

8pm - 10pm Dinner, Skype, Stream something from my Plex server

10pm - 12/1/2/3am - Work on a personal project or more work stuff. Push some
changes and deploy them

??? - 8am - Sleep

I would also play lacrosse on Wednesdays which changes the whole end of my
day.

------
rhgraysonii
Wake up at some time X.

Check Slack, and my google calendar for the day.

Open up asana, check our priority queue and ensure my in progress/upcoming are
set accurately (remote team, so this is very important)

I work mostly with data scientists. So, some days it's pure cowboy coding.
Experimental and research stuff. Lots of image processing, NLP, and API design
stuff.

After I finish the first task of the day, contact the Chief Scientist/senior
data scientists. Review, consult, plan if we can do more to it or if its worth
'graduating' to a larger product.

Or, if its a larger, production project consult with product and VP of eng as
well. Ensure all delivery needs are met.

At the end of the day we have an informal chat of no specified amount of time.
The 'end' of the day is often midnight-1am-ish for us because we have people
in 5 time zones. We try to be as flexible as possible especially with a guy in
South Korea.

~~~
S4M
I understand your company has lots of remote data scientists... Are you
hiring? I'd be interested to have a go if it's the case. How can I contact
you?

------
joshmn
Lots of great responses here, I can chime in! I'm from Minneapolis.

I usually wake up between 9-11, and always without an alarm. I'll get up, take
a 5-hour energy, go have some breakfast while I watch Reddit.tv. Breakfast is
usually toast and Honey Bunches of Oats, sometimes eggs and toast, sometimes a
toaster strudel (no toast). I'll then pop my Vyvanse (adderall) and head to my
office.

Once I'm in my office I'll hop on Slack, Ventrilo (we <3 it), and check my
emails. I'll check in with everyone to let them know I'm alive and I'll excuse
myself while I spend 15-minutes max replying to emails.

Lunch is usually around 1, but no later than 2. It's a bit smaller than my
breakfast is, but enough to ensure that I don't get hungry before dinner.

I'll then spend the next five hours as close to a 100% productivity level as I
can.

Figure it's about 7, I start to unwind. I'll put on a sports game or head out
for a drink with colleagues or clients.

Around 9 is when I'm usually doing my own thing. I'll spend some time on my
piano or working on a side project.

It's now about 11 where I settle into bed, no laptop allowed on my bed. I'll
put on a documentary, close out emails, and prepare for the next day.

I'm 23, self-employed. I quit my bullshit "100+ hour work week let's call you
at 1am saying somethings not working on my daughter's iPhone with the app" a
few months ago. I'm not going back.

~~~
provost
What's the start-up?

~~~
joshmn
I'm actually running a little development agency while I work on some side
projects. My goal is to use my income from developing other people's ideas to
develop my own. Sooner or later, though, I hope the agency is on autopilot so
I can devote full-time to one of my own ideas.

------
eswat
From Ottawa, Canada. Before I had a very loose daily structure but was
noticing my output and general health was suffering, so trying to stick to
this structure on weekdays:

6:30 - Alarm on gym days, otherwise I just naturally wake up around 7-8

7:30 - work with my PT on gym days and refresh myself after, or on non-gym
days I catch up on the Internets and prepare for the day

8:30 - hit a coffeeshop and motor through client work (mornings are where I
find it best for me to work on this stuff)

12:30 - lunch break, where most of the time I just grab something from the
same vegetarian restaurant and bring it home and usually couple with reading a
book during this time

13:30 - nap if I’m tired, otherwise continue with client work, though my
energy levels are usually sapped by now so I work on low-hanging fruit items

16:30 - wind down, catch up on the Internets

The rest of the evening is more loose, either hanging out with friends,
playing some board or video games, figure out if I need to restructure
possessions or other things in life, or continue my indie game dev hobby
(recently started). I go to sleep anywhere between 22:00-2:00. I also try to
make a todo list for the next day so I do less planning on the fly, but that
habit hasn’t sunk in yet.

------
galfarragem
I'll describe the best and worse daily routine I ever had during my working
life.

 _Best (I was truly happy with this routine):_

08:00 - Waking up with somebody that makes you happy. (When there is urgent
"homework", getting up at 06:00). Tasty and elaborated breakfast.

08:40 - 20 minutes walking to work, independently of the weather (sun, rain,
snow). Good time to contemplate and meditate.

09:00 - Work that I really like, feeling that I'm making something that makes
a difference, with people I respect and being reasonably well paid for that.

12:15 - Lunch. 2 options: a) Buying something in the shop and walking around
or going to the park to eat it. b) Going to a restaurant with
colleagues/friends.

13:00 - Work that I really like, feeling that I'm making something that makes
a difference, with people I respect and being reasonably well paid for that.
Anyway I prefer to work mornings.

17:00 - Walking every day to a different gym in the city. Normally meeting
friends there.

18:30 - Arriving home in the city and having a girl/woman with a great smile
on her face waiting for you. Making/having a tasty and elaborated dinner
together.

20:00 - Time for novelty: movies at home, meeting friends/new people, going
somewhere. No TV. Unpredictability is great here.

24:00 - Sleep with a girl/woman with a smile in the face.

 _Worse (my unhappy times):_

08:00 - Waking up alone.

08:30 - Long commute(1.5h) during rush hour to work, changing transportation 3
times.

10:00 - Work that I really hate, feeling that I'm making bullshit, with people
I don't respect and being very bad paid for that.

13:00 - Lunch. Taking food from home to compensate long commute costs and low
wage.

14:00 - Work that I really hate, feeling that I'm making bullshit, with people
I don't respect and being very bad paid for that. Afternoons are even worse.

19:00 - Long commute home.

20:30 - Arriving home in suburbs. Too late and far way for gym. Eating
something.

21:30 - Too late and far away to meet somebody. Crappy TV/internet till
sleeping time.

24:00 - Sleep alone.

------
jetskindo
This made me realize how messed up my day is.

California:

Wake up at 1 - 2 pm

Wash brush

3 pm go out and get breakfast and listen to podcast

3:30 pm I record podcast

5 pm I play with the kids (niece and nephew)

6 pm fire up laptop edit the podcast write a blog post - if the stars are
aligned I may publish.

8 pm I waste time on the web

10 pm watch a movie and dinner.

12 am I open blender and work on my 3d project

3 am I code and experiment new tech.

4 am I listen to another podcast while playing clash of clans

5 am I am consumed by sleep.

Context: I quit my job 6 months ago after 3 and a half year. I am trying a
bunch of new things to see what sticks.

~~~
jdkanani
I tried blender once, it was taking too much time so I gave up. I wanted to
make animation movie. Would you mind sharing your stuff with blender?

------
vbsteven
In Belgium working for a startup which I just gave my notice to so I can start
my own business:

06:00 Alarm goes off and get up

06:15 Leave for work, listen to podcasts or music depending on mood

07:00 arrive at work, check up on email and monitoring tools

07:30 pick a task from Jira and start coding

11:30 daily scrum standup to see what my colleagues are doing and how we can
help out each other

12:00 lunch, usually I buy something from the local supermarket and we eat in
the office kitchen

12:45 resume work, mostly coding and avoiding meetings

15:30 start commute home, podcasts or music depending on mood

16:15 do freelance work or work on one of my own projects

18:00 pick up my daughter from daycare, have dinner and play with her until
she goes to bed

20:15 more freelance/own project work or watch TV shows with my wife

23:00 sleep

The last few weeks I tried moving those 2 hours of freelance work from late in
the afternoon to right after I wake up (and move my day job 2 hours later),
and this seems to massively improve the quality of the work I get done for my
own company while not impacting my day job code quality that much. I suspect
this is because otherwise the long commute home is draining a lot of energy.

------
tomh
Location: Kharkov, Ukraine

7:30-8:15 Wake up, get out of bed, shower, coffee

8:30-8:45 Walk to work, open up the office for the rest of the staff

9:00-14:00 Work work work work. Since we have an 'open office' there are no
set meetings but as the manager I will be usually having sit-downs with each
of my reports and figuring out what's going on. Also will engage in Skype-
chats with my other reports/colleagues (we have remote developers in Europe
and Africa)

14:00-17:30 Wind down with a long lunch or work on extra projects if there is
a tight deadline (usually the case)

17:30-18:00 Close up the office and walk home

18:00-18:20 Standup with the USA office (there are ten hours' difference
between CA and UA), get updates on what is going on and get latest assignments

18:30-19:30 Dinner break

20:00-22:00 Skype calls with the USA for work, usually with PMs and clients
based in the USA. Can also include answering emails, answering forums, or
running demos/presentations over the GoToMeeting

22:00-midnight or 1am - cycle down, watch some streaming shows, goof around on
a tablet, go to sleep

------
adamzerner
Pomodoros = a productivity technique I use when I'm working. Currently I'm
learning algorithms as I apply for programming jobs.

09:00 - wake up via alarm and hit snooze

09:40 - actually wake up -> check internet stuff

10:00 - get out of bed and start doing pomodoros

11:00 - make smoothie and drink it while continuing pomodoros

11:30 - do pushups -> continue pomodoros

12:30 - lunch

01:30 - pomodoros (usually get interrupted with something)

05:00 - gym

06:30 - shower, surf web

07:00 - dinner, watch a little tv

08:30 - more pomodoros, or watch move/socialize

12:00 - lights out, listen to podcast/watch tv until I'm sleepy

01:00 - sleep

Really, this is the best case scenario.

* In practice, I often sleep later. And I often try to go to be earlier but end up lying in bed for too long trying to go to sleep.

* And somehow my meals end up taking forever. I'm a really slow eater, and apparently a slow cooker also. Plus I like to relax and watch a little TV after I finish.

* Often times I'm interrupted with stuff. Today I had to shovel the driveway. Tomorrow I have to go to the doctor.

------
hugorodgerbrown
Would be really interesting if people could add their location. Seems like
those in US have really long journeys to work?

~~~
sarciszewski
That's a very good point. I'm going to upvote this to make it more visible. I
would encourage others to do the same.

------
brosky117
I wake up at 6:40 and make my way to work by 7:00.

I work at GoPro so the work is usually pretty relaxed. I spend most of the day
working on software issues, browsing HN/PH/Quora, and studying programming
languages (Java and Python are my flavors of the month).

I leave for school around 1:30 to make it to 2 o'clock classes. I'm there
until 5-7pm.

Make my way home to my beautiful wife and baby girl. Eat, exercise, and hit
the books. I try to pull the plug sometime around 9 but I'm usually too
interested in whatever I'm studying.

My wife is good about keeping me balanced though so I try to spend as much
time as possible with her.

Luckily, I sleep like a champ so I'm always out as soon as my head hits the
pillow.

My life is crazy busy right now (I also do some freelance work with SumoMe and
am trying to get a side business off the ground) but I totally love it. I just
wish I were getting paid more!

~~~
arbabu
Out of curiosity, what does PH stand for?

~~~
krat0sprakhar
ProductHunt [http://producthunt.com/](http://producthunt.com/)

------
laurieg
I live in Fukuoka, Japan. Here's my antidote to the Tokyo rush:

8-10am Wake up, lounge a little, read. If I'm feeling very energetic I'll wake
up at 7am and hop in the pool for a bit.

10-1pm Work on software projects, research papers, lesson plans.

1pm Quick snack. Cup of tea.

1.30-3.30pm More programming. My co-founder is probably up and useful by now,
maybe run some by things, maybe not. Almost always via slack.

3.30pm Quick blast in the gym, usually weights.

4.00pm Biiig meal. I only eat twice a day.

4.30pm Get my things together for going to my teaching jobs.

5-9pm Teach English, Science, Math, all sorts to keep my rent paid.

10 or 11pm go to bed.

For a while I did a full time programming job at a company while doing the
teaching in the evening. Definitely too many ours. If there's anything missing
I thing I could do with a bit more outside time. What do you think?

------
a269b546fefc
I wake up at 7. Then take a shower and create 2 sachets of microwavable
porridge, read something on reddit or hn / watch youtube scishow during
breakfast. Around 8:15-30-(45) go through the door and take 20 minutes bus and
35 minutes of tube then walk 5 minutes. Usually listening to music or some
podcasts but the tube is so loud I can't hear anything.

At work from 9:30-10, try code something, review pull requests, tickets.
Trying to concentrate. Lunch from around 13 until 14. Repeat previous coding
part. Go home around 17:30 - 18.

Usually just reading and watching videos/ IM-ing. Sometimes coding if I have a
good idea for my side project. Or creating content to my site project. But
this is not longer than 1 hour, and usually not even exists. At 23:00 I go to
sleep.

I posted mine because everyone else's was like my dream, hehe.

------
pfind
Most days I turn the music on and start programming 0830 or 0900. I'll
probably check new music releases while programming. Take short breaks to faff
around on Internet.

1100 is probably dogs's first walk for 20 minutes.

Stop programming for an hour at 1300 for lunch - probably watch something.

Might listen to a podcast while I continue programming until about 1800; at
this point take dogs out again but for a longer walk.

Might do more programming, work on a set, study something technical - usually
sound orientated these days - or make dinner if it's my turn.

Eat dinner 2100 and go to bed at 2200.

Unless this is the Monday after our monthly sunday electronica evening; in
which case I'm probably annihilated for the rest of the day.

Edit: In the UK

------
olegious
In SF (pretty typical weekday M-Th, Friday's are different)

6:30 wake up, stretch, pull-ups, handstands, meditate (don't eat breakfast,
intermittent fasting has changed my mornings and I haven't looked back)

7:30ish catch bus to work, read industry news on bus

8:30 arrive at work, make tea, review tasks for day, set up pomodoros, take
care of personal errands (once or twice a week meet a good friend to catch up)

9:00 begin work

12:30ish post lunch walk (about 20 min)

5-5:30pm leave work

6:30 get home, maybe workout (2-3 times a week), prepare/eat dinner with wife,
maybe go for a walk together

8:30ish or 9:00- work on personal projects (python, watch repair, blogging,
etc.), or watch TV with wife

10:30ish get in bed, read

Midnight, sleep.

------
sarciszewski
During the work week...

04:30 - Alarm, followed by shaving, showering, etc.

06:00 - begin walking to bus stop

07:10 - arrive at bus stop

07:15 - board the bus

08:15 - bus arrives downtown; walk to office

08:30 until 17:00 - work

17:45 - board bus

19:00 - arrive at bus stop

20:00ish - arrive home

When I'm lucky, I can make the 17:15 bus home and shave 10-20 minutes (because
Orlando traffic is _the worst_ ) off.

------
carucez
San Diego County, California.

M-F: 06:30 stock market alarm rings. I sleep in.

06:30-07:15 twitter alerts inform me of stocks to trade.

07:30 I get out of bed

08:00 showered, i head downstairs to read more twitter

08:30 leave for work

09:30 arrive at work (yea, suck)... do work all day, non-stop, no lunch, no
break.

17:00 leave for home

18:05 arrive at home, turn on oven, crack beer, clean up

18:15 pizza in oven, read twitter, ebook, or other reading

18:45 eat dinner

19:00 watch video lectures, set stock alerts

20:00 write notes, draw pictures, prepare for tomorrow's code session

21:00 tea and quiet time, screens avoided.

21:30 prepare for bed

21:45 in bed, lights out

S-S: 08:30 get out of bed... naturally

08:35 coffee, cold water, email

09:00 notes for items to do today

09:30 eat oatmeal, clean kitchen/house/bathrooms... whatever

10:30 computer time

11:00 programming time (or venture outside for a change)

17:00 make rice

17:45 prepare dinner

18:00 eat

18:30 dishes, tv

20:30 twitter/news/world events

21:30 prepare for bed

22:00 in bed... (possibly read a book)

22:30 lights out

------
Fenicio
Wake up at 06:00

Work in the last CS project until 07:00

Shower, breakfast, clean up after myself, leaving home at 08:15

Get to work at 09:00, go into jungle mode until 14:00

Drive to father's place, eat in under 5 minutes, go back to work to be there
at 15:00

Work until 18:00, pick up the girlfriend, get home at 19:00

Do house maintenance, cook, eat, watch something over popcorn time.

Go to sleep between 22:00 and 23:00

Repeat until I get fired or I finish the CS project.

------
pgathogo
5:20 - Wake up - Take a shower

5:45 - Leave for the office (to avoid MAD traffic)

6:15 - 7:15 - Read a book

7:15 - 7:30 - Breakfast (office), catch-up local news

7:45 - 8:10 - Hacker news/Reddit/Techcrunch et al ...

8:30 - 11:15 - Office work / side projects

11:15 - 11:45 - Tea break (office)

12:00 - 12:50 - Office work/ Side projects

13:00 - 14:30 - Gym

14:45 - 16:00 - Office work/side Projects

16:30 - 17:00 - Tea break

17:30 - 19:45 - Office work/side projects/hacker news et al ...

20:00 - 21:00 - Drive back home

21:00 - 22:45 - Read a book

22:45 - 05:20 - Sleep

... a tight loop of trying to define life...

~~~
ibejoeb
This is an average day? That seems to me like an awfully long time at work.
I'd like to ask a few sincere questions. Do you really enjoy being in the
office? Do you feel compelled to be there? Do you choose not to have outside
activities, or is it a side effect of this schedule? Thanks for the reply, if
you choose.

------
JDiculous
Location: Manhattan, NYC

8:45am Alarm goes off

9:00am Wake up

9:40am Leave apartment and head to the subway

10:00am Arrive at work. Check HN, email, my stock portfolio, maybe get some
breakfast, etc.

10:30am Start coding

11:30am Morning standup

12:00pm Get lunch

3:00 Grab snack from the kitchen

5:30pm Go home

6:00pm Work on side project or read stuff on the internet. Get dinner

12:00pm Tell myself that it's time to go to bed

1:00pm If I'm tired, go to bed. Otherwise keep doing whatever I'm doing. But
hopefully I'm asleep by now

------
culturestate
I live in Hong Kong, but work primarily with clients in the west so my
schedule is shifted to compensate. All times are GMT+8.

12pm - 2p: Wake up (no alarm unless I have an early appointment)

2p - 6p: Run errands, exercise, meetings/calls with any APAC clients

6p - 10p: Hang out with my wife (who works a traditional 9-5 schedule), go out
to dinner, meet friends, etc.

10p - 5am: Work.

5a - 6a: Read to wind down for bed

6a-ish: Sleep.

~~~
surething
Do you keep to the same sleep schedule on weekends?

~~~
culturestate
Yep. This isn't massively different from what I did when living in the states;
I've always found myself far more productive at night when there are fewer
distractions. Now I just get more sleep since I don't have to report to an
office in the morning.

------
endtime
Wake up between 11:00 and 12:30, arrive at work (Google NYC) by 1:30 or so,
leave by 8:30ish (later when I have a good reason), get home, have dinner with
my wife if I made it home by 8:00, kiss her goodnight, and take over watching
my three-month-old twins until 4-5 AM, at which point I wake up my wife and go
to sleep.

------
lfx
Location: Vilnius, Lithuania

5:50 wake up: breakfast, preparing to work. 6:50 leaving home 7:30 arrive to
the office by feat, during time audio books, podcasts, birds 8:15 starting
working 11:00 walking across the forest by something for lunch 12:00 back to
work 1) 16:45 leaving for gym 19:45 back from gym 20:00 light dinner 2) 17:15
leaving for home 18:00 dinner 19:00 hose hold stuff/coding/socialising/etc.
\-- 22:00 trying go to bed 23:00 sleeping \---- Typical developer day?

------
karmaboi2
Sg

Here is my colleague's:

6.00 Am wakeup brush and shower 6.30 catch a train 7.45 eat breakfast 8.15
reach office 8.15 - 9 reply email 9-12.30 work 12.30-1 lunch 1-1.15 read news
1.15 -7 work/meeting 7-9pm reply email/work on crunching stuff 10pm reach home
10 - 11pm plays dota/Diablo3 11pm replies boss email after his boss finished
taking care of boss's kids Between 1.15am - 2am sleep

Mine's almost like his, got to reply his emails at all times after he got
bombarded by boss's, but I generally get home by 8-10pm and wakes up at 7am to
catch the company's shuttle bus.

------
imkevinxu
Loved reading these stories! Inspired me to create this in the last 2 hours, I
love hearing about the nitty gritty details of how other peoples' lives go
[http://whatdyoudoyesterday.com/](http://whatdyoudoyesterday.com/)

------
alex_g
Based on my more recent schedule:

7:30 Wake up

7:50 Get on my bike and ride to school (or bus if I had a rough night)

8:00 Go to class (occasionally an hr break b/w class which I use to enjoy a
book)

11:00 Finish class; walk/ride home

12:30 Make lunch

1:00 Start doing problems for Systems Programming class

< Many hours of frustration, confusion, 30 min. breaks, and cries of success
ensue >

12:00 Go to bed.

------
jgrahamc
"A life in a day of a startup CEO":
[http://doublestealth.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/a-life-in-day-
of...](http://doublestealth.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/a-life-in-day-of-startup-
ceo.html)

~~~
sarciszewski
Are you the author of that blog post?

Totally off topic, I didn't really expect to see you up on HN at midnight on a
Friday. Hopefully no fires in CloudFlareLand to put out.

~~~
jgrahamc
Yes. I wrote the whole "Double Stealth" parody blog. Someday I'll get back to
it.

It's perhaps midnight on Friday in SF, but it's 0813 in London :-)

~~~
sarciszewski
Oh, my mistake. I assumed you were in SF for some reason.

~~~
jgrahamc
Sometimes I am :-)

------
ilamparithi
Thanks a lot OP. This is exactly something I wanted to ask. Of late I have
been feeling like wasting lot of time. I was looking for some kind of
inspiration to bring some order to my life.

------
jmduke
This is a fun concept.

07.30 am → Alarm goes off.

08.00 am → Wake up.

08.15 am → Summon energy to make eggs, shower, etc.

08.45 am → Listen to hypem and read personal emails/HN.

09.00 am → Walk to work.

09.15 am → Arrive at work. Check to see if someone brought in Top Pot.

09.16 am → Brush donut crumbs off shirt. Grab coffee; check metrics
dashboards, ticket queue, and internal news.

09.30 am → Grab more coffee. Go through work emails and code reviews.

10.30 am → Morning stand-up meeting.

10.45 am → Code and achieve some pedestrian level of zen.

11.30 am → Check to see if Tacos el Tajin (taco truck) is here and if the line
is short.

11.35 am → Head somewhere else for lunch because the line for Tacos el Tajin
is _never_ short.

11.45 am → Eat lunch at desk, watching an internal presentation or Coursera
video.

12.15 pm → Resume pedestrian level of zen.

02.00 pm → Roll a d6. If >3, continue programming. Otherwise, attending
meetings for the next ninety minutes.

02.19 pm → Grab more coffee.

03.30 pm → Roll a d6. If >4, continue programming. Otherwise, attend meetings
for the next ninety minutes.

05.00 pm → Wrap up for the day; make sure I didn't miss any emails while I
only had one cup of coffee in my system; check to see if there are any new
CRs; follow up with anyone who I told myself I should follow up with.

05.10 pm → Head home.

05.18 pm → Pass by Chipotle and have a meaningful and slightly existential
struggle about whether or not I want a burrito bowl.

05.25 pm → Arrive home. Make dinner or eat aforementioned burrito bowl.

06.00 pm → Engage in requisite amount of physical exertion; I try and run and
lift twice a week each.

06.45 pm → Watch an unhealthy amount of television (right now: The Wire) while
doing something else similarly mindless (likely Threes or Desert Golfing.)

08.45 pm → Take a bath. Seriously, if you have access to a bathtub and you're
not taking a regular bath, you're missing out.

09.15 pm → Head to Uptown Espresso and do something vaguely intellectual: this
is generally either OSS, writing a blog post, or reading (right now: Big Sur).

10.00 pm → Head home. Clean up my apartment and finish up vaguely intellectual
activity.

11.00 pm → Make a Manhattan (or have a Dogfish Brown Ale) and listen to jazz.

11.30 pm → Nightly ritual jank; brush teeth, wash face, wear sweatpants. Set
alarm for 7.30am.

12.00 am → Go to bed.

12.02 am → Guiltily browse Twitter on my phone for what seems like hours.

12.15 am → Drift to sleep.

All in all: I get to walk to work, spent eight hours doing something I care
about, and generally enjoy myself (as long as I don't look at how much I spend
at Chipotle each month.) Life isn't too complicated.

~~~
krat0sprakhar
This made me chuckle :D Thanks for sharing!

------
josephpmay
Let's say today is Monday, because Fridays and Saturdays are boring.

Wake up at 9:00am.

Go in the shower, if I didn't shower the night before

Grudgingly go to the EVK dining hall and eat a doughnut, some sort of potato,
and maybe something with protein in it.

Walk through campus to class. If I'm feeling in the right mood I'll listen to
music on the way. Maybe something by The Strokes.

10:00: Use my RFID-enabled ID to enter my classroom. My first class of the day
on Mondays is "Case Studies in Innovation." As the name implies, we study
innovative companies. It's only the second week, but I love this class. It's
interactive and discussion based.

11:40: After class is over, I quickly grab a bite to eat. I'll either get
Panda Express from the cafeteria downstairs, an Acai bowl from Nektor in the
arts school, or eat at the Parkside dining hall with my classmates.

I don't have much time to eat, because my next class, EE566 (Fourier Optics)
starts at 12:30. This is my most challenging class, because its a much more
advanced level than I _should_ be taking. Today we're reviewing how to do two
dimensional Fourier transforms.

After EE566 ends at 1:50, I have three hours of free time that I'll use to
either work on homework, work on a group project, browse Hacker News, or do my
laundry. I usually spend this time in the "Garage," which is the special
private workspace for academy students. The Garage has five 3D printers, two
classrooms, a woodshop, and a laser printer.

My next class, Innovator's Forum, starts at 5:00. To enter the class, I use a
special attendance card that I had to pick up on the other side of campus. I
wonder why they can't just take attendance by scanning our ID's. Today's guest
speaker is Craig Hanna, who designs amusement parks for a living. If you
aren't familiar with his work, he designed the Harry Potter World at Universal
Studios. [I can't really tell you what happens in this class, because it
hasn't actually happened yet]

After Innovator's Forum, the Academy kids (31 out of the 100 kids in the
Innovator's Forum lecture) go to The Garage for Innovator's Roundtable. In
this class, the tables are flipped (no pun intended). Instead of the guest
speaker presenting to us, we present to the guest speaker. This week, we are
presenting our observations of an experience. My group was assigned the DMV,
and we have an interactive skit where classmates have to go through the
process as if they were going to apply for a California driver's license.

After each group presents and we get feedback from the guest speaker, most of
us will head to the Parkside Dining Hall for a group dinner. I don't love the
food at Parkside, but it's a great opportunity to socialize with my
classmates. Depending on how interesting the guest speaker is, we may or may
not discuss the presentation during this dinner.

What happens next depends on how much work I have. If I'm really busy, I'll go
back to my dorm to complete my assignments. If I don't have any work, I may
head over to one of my classmate's/friend's house to party.

If I'm smart, I'll go to bed by 1:00, so I'm nice and rested for my 11:00am
Excel class on Tuesday. Else, I'll stay up late reading a David Foster Wallace
novel or watching Twin Peaks.

