My daily routine has evolved in certain extents over the years. I warn you now that once you see it, you might wonder how I actually get any work done. And to any colleagues and/or shareholders: I do work (I promise). I should start with a non-judgemental statement: I am not really on social media. I do not have facebook, instagram, twitter, tiktok, mastadon, or anything else like that. At all. I do have linkedin (but not on my phone). My digital anchors are currently limited to checking linkedin online (which is....terrible) and youtube and google (and hacker) news. That's about it. So when you see the things I try to do 365.25 times a year I want you to know that the time comes from NOT doing those other things.
You can do those other things 23 hours a day - I'm not better than you. I just want to point out that I do not do those things so that I can do other things.
The next thing to cover is my life partner. In this case not my actual life partner, but the 'person' I talk to throughout every hour of every day for the past 10 years. Her name is Trello*, and we're in love. If you're not familiar, just think of it (in my case) as a digital kanban board (new window). It's a way to visualize what you're doing, and I'd have to imagine that there were several behind the scenes of Gung Ho.
Anyway, so my flywheel starts with a cron job (scheduled task) that runs at 6am local time every day. I update this one file whenever I need to. So this would over any of the daily/weekly/monthly/etc things so I will only mention it once here.
First: how is my personal board organized? Like any good factory, we start to the left and try to work right. I'll see your to-do/doing/done and raise you EIGHT swimlanes. Allow me to (probably annoy, but try to) explain it to you.
DONE. This should make sense. If you finish something, you should move to done. Then why have a done column? Couple of reasons - one is that I have what I call a trash collector (not the correct CS definition) that runs weekly to give me an estimate of what I got done. We'll cover that under 'Weekly' this is already going to be long. The more important, as most of corporate america would tell you, is that just because you think it is done, does not mean it actually is done. So I don't want to archive a work thing only for it to come back and then me deal with it. So on Sunday this is empty and Saturday this if full.
PINNED. These are just a couple of convenience cards (tasks) that live here because I like them. Might be some notes that I've collected over the week to give at an all-hands. Things like that (definitely not some low priority passwords for local work that I do not want to deal with a password manager).
NOW. These are things that must get done today. I am not angrily strict here (things happen) but I really try to make sure these get done. At this point I should mention that cards have properties beyond just being a task. They can have labels and checklists. My current labels are: [Company 1, Company 2A, Company 2B, Any company not 1 or 2, Adam, or Family]. I also like checklists, so depending on what is happening I will have checklists. This will get important when I circle back, after mentioning all the columns, on what happens every single morning at 6am local. More on that later.
NEXT. I used to have today and tomorrow and later as columns, but I didn't like it. So now I have 'now' and 'next'. Basically next is 'crap that needs to happen pretty damn soon but will not happen today'. It can be refreshing to throw things there.
LATER. This list is long AF*** - but with labels and such it is still pretty manageable. This is the personal equivalent of a software company putting something 'in the backlog'. For me, though, one of my weekly tasks is to look through some of these columns. So I am able to move things out of my immediate mental space but not be afraid that it will fall off the map (looking at your backlog and seeing a) custom reporting or b) user masquerading or similar thing that we all know will never happen).
WAITING. Important. I've just asked you a question - I need this off my NOW plate but need to know that it will come back to me. Note that I never use due dates in Trello - too many variables. This is also something that is checked weekly. If I need to know sooner, I use one of my trusty Trello power ups (1).
DEAD TIME. You read another cool thing on hackernews and want to explore it, because you are just that kind of curious guy. Also you have to go to the DMV from time to time. Where do you put that kind of thing? Here!
ICE BOX. Sadland. Your buddy told you this new project would go to the moon - you just needed to build it. So you did, and then nothing. You don't want to archive it just quite yet, so you put it here. It'll die eventually, but until then it lives in the equivalent of the Island of Misfit Toys.
Ok. Carriage return carriage return. What is actually on the daily routine? What magically shows up at 6am local time? Great question. Here it is.
At 6am I get a card inserted into NOW, at the very top. It always is named 'Daily tasks - DATE' whereby date would be December 25, 2025. Currently there are 8 tasks. I should mention that I am not (purely) a pyschopath. I don't have tasks about eating meals (or about business cards, or putting the lotion on the skin) - these are things that are small but intentional enough that they seem valid. These gets evaluated quarterly. There is an order but they do not need to be completed in order.
Pray. I really enjoy https://prayasyougo.org/ (new window), which is generally a guided prayer of 10-15 minutes. This is a requirement and outside of something really big, this happens every day.
Journal. I have been writing a daily journal for years. I will make a note to cover this specific thing because it is impactful and this entry is already long. This is also a requirement. The rest of my daily are good/nice to have - these two are going to happen. https://blog.therosebunch.com/journal. (you can go here now or later - same link to 'weekly' step regardless).
Health. I eat 4 times a day. 3 of them are (generally) the same meals, with dinner being different. Here I want to use an app to fill out what I plan to eat. I also want to ensure that I take my OTC supplements (like magnesium, not horny goat weed or something weird) and weigh myself. Take this more as data collection and less of 'must comply or self flagellates'. More on that with some backend data things later.
Get outside. I really want to walk for at least 30 minutes. Ideally its after a meal, but I'm in front of a computer a lot so whenever works. If its a meeting where I'm just talking, that is great. I also have quite a list of podcasts so I am happy to consume.
Neck exercises. Womp - I need neck surgery (fun fact its impacting my finger sensitivity). I also have 3 kids and am busy so I do these every day to try to help with my nerves (literally) until I can try to shoehorn this into my life.
Read. Pretty straightforward. Baseline is 15 minutes and goal is 30. Could be kindle or book(s) I have nearby. I got this from my father (also an engineer) who told me he didn't read for fun because he had to read for work. WTF***. So now I try to read for fun. My goal last year was a modest 12 books and I got to 15. So this year it is 15.
Music. I played a lot of instruments in HS - I can still remember how my brain/body felt different going from studying up on physics to playing bassoon chamber music. So now I have a couple guitars, a keyboard, and a bari sax. Goal is at least 15 minutes a day with stretch to 30 minutes.
Mindfulness. This is an extension of that journaling piece. But the goal here is to really just take a minute and feel my feelings. I used to think my feelings - this is different. And then I use a very good app called 'How we feel' to write that down. Sometimes I will use their AI to explore a little more. A lot of times I will not, and that is fine.
So there you have it - a daily routine that takes at least an hour a day, more ideally at least 2 hours a day, every day. See point about not spending those 2 hours on other things (besides cute videos of dog rescues or reaction videos to people learning Tool exists).
Up next: weekly (and bi-weekly) tasks: https://blog.therosebunch.com/weekly-biweekly
(1) Power Ups: I only use two. One is 'snooze'. This is great if you know that on Friday you need to get your car inspected. You don't want to remember that on Thursday and move it, and you don't want it rotting in 'later' - so you put it on NOW and then tell it to go away until Friday at 6am. The other one I use (not as much as I should) is a planning poker variant to estimate size. This came from the [insert many company labels here] side of things but honestly I have not strictly followed it, nor have I really found the compelling reason to do it. After all that kind of requires an all or nothing aspect and if you have family cards like 'buy a shitload*** of teacher presents' how are you supposed to rank that against 'auth is failing for this random authentik edge case'. And even if you could....why? How does that make anything better over time?
*I pay for Trello. I love Trello. You'll note that my interest in capitalizing things is very low. I capitalize this one. I pay for Trello. I'd pay more if they raised the rates. I also think atlassian** has a boatload of shitty*** products and generally is crap. So I am not a shill but I will tell you what I like. Atlassian please don't shit*** on this product because I don't want to roll my own or some FOS version.
**petty
***Also I curse. Sorry/not f'n sorry for that
So, what's the point of this? Not much. But, I did want to at least set the stage about how I think about things, to hopefully guide anyone who reads any of this.
The ultimate goal is to get personally, incrementally better,* without adding shame or anxiety to my thoughts along the way. I've found that threading this needle is fairly nuanced and have made many changes over the years, and will likely make many more in the years to follow. This is based principally on two basic facts: 1) I am not great at doing this (but willing to learn and get better), and more importantly 2) even if I was, I am not observing a houseplant or a brick - I am evaluating a living person who interacts with lots of people and who himself changes over time. Things get complicated, amiright?
All of which is fine: if it was easy, everyone would do it.
Anyway, I generally get as atomic as daily routines/plans, and as global as annual trips/reviews (this all being personal and not strictly for business or other reasons, although obviously that comes into play). As such I've structured this from the most to least atomic things that I do to try to bring order to my life. Along the way I'll mention some things that I've invented (hardware, software, or otherwise) that has helped. I'll do my best to link the next logical step along the way, in case you want to follow along in that way (remember webrings? Pepperidge Farm remembers).
At no point have I ever considered this to be the 'correct' way to do anything. Please do not take this as some kind of course or approach that I think you should implement. At the same time, I would strongly encourage you to salvage any and all parts that you do find interesting. I have no monopoly on good ideas, nor am I presenting to you my finished product. One day I will die, and on that day (be it tomorrow or 50 years from now) this project will be left incomplete. I do not take that as a negative at all - just a fact of the human condition.
You'll see a mix of more and less technical things. Like mentioning what a cron job is. This is meant only to help those who may not yet know (or care) about some of the more technical parts of how this works. I'm threading a new needle here, so if you want more detail please let me know. If you want less...maybe squint if we end up with some SQL.
Step 1: the daily 'routine': Here be dragons
*Also I use AI a lot but I refuse to use AI to help write anything here. So please excuse incorrect commas or dashes where they should not exist. Or don't - I don't have a comment section so you can scream into the void if it helps. This blog is personal so seeing something expressed or spelled incorrectly actually feels like a win, versus several emdashes that clearly came from the void.