A few months ago I posted on the importance of a daily plan and shared my initial one. I also mentioned iterating as I learned and maybe posting an update. Here it is! I have learned a lot. My first draft daily plan was created for a guy not working by a guy who was working at least 50 hours per week. Hence it may have been a little over structured and lacking in choices:
Daily Plan, What I Got Wrong:
A layout like the above would be necessary to plan every minute if under a tight schedule like the guy working 50+ hours a week. However, as the guy focusing on alternative endeavors with an open schedule it looks more like the following in practice:
I stay pretty rigid with my exercise block during the day but leave quite a bit of flexibility for my morning and afternoon blocks. This leaves more room for choices based on mood that day and what is inspiring in the moment. Do I feel like writing some music or doing some investment research? Do I want to meditate or would I rather go outside because it is an awesome day?
What I have found that what works is to start the day with a little bit of mindfulness that I am fortunate to have the flexibility to do what I want that day, then I make a list of things that I am choosing to get done. I generally either skip breakfast or eat something low in carbs and high in protein. I’ve found that a heavy breakfast makes me feel lethargic despite being most fresh and rested having just woken up. There is actually some research that suggests that people have evolved to perform better while a bit hungry after fasting (but not overly famished) because the mind had to be at its sharpest when food was needed in order to survive. All I know is that it seems to work. Research also suggests that people can reason best in the morning hours. For these reasons, I try to tackle things that I have been most putting off and that are more mentally taxing in the morning. Often this has been investment work, writing, and learning . In the afternoon after a sizable lunch and now being layered in the mood of the day, I have generally been focusing on mentally simpler things like acounting / personal finance, planning adventures, household stuff, or website maintenance. The wild cards with these time blocks have proven to be working on music, meditation / mindfulness, and meeting people / mini adventures. Because music (and some articles) often come best with inspiration, I do these things when the spark comes no matter the time of day. Similarly, meeting people and mini adventures (like fresh snow and skiing on a weekday) happen when others are available or an opportunity arises so I embrace the flexibility to be able to seize it. Mindfulness and meditation efforts happen when I find myself in some errant mood or needing some perspective after something crappy happens.
If I find that one of my priorities has been falling by the wayside, I move it up on the following day’s list. This has worked for me but may vary for others depending on levels of personal discipline and appetite for achievement. Below is a rough overall breakdown of where my hours have been going in any particular week recently:
So the rigidity of my initial plan has morphed into this more choice driven approach as described above and it seems to be working well. Another thing that I did not factor in to my initial daily plan at all was this website itself. It actually took quite a bit of effort to brush up on the old wordpress skills and create this thing. While the first 10 posts poured out like a manifesto, I am now reminded that writing also takes some time and being in the right mindset. I have found that writing music for the project I am working on competes with time for writing articles like this one. Because of this, journalling has also fallen by the wayside somewhat as there is a limit to how much I feel like writing.
One other thing that I didn’t adequately account for is how much research and planning it takes to put together adventures. If you’ve seen my aspirational list of adventures, you know that I am making it a priority to fit as many of these things into my life now that I can make work. I have been averaging about 3-6 hrs per week just on planning these, learning, booking things, and trying to find people who can help and/or participate. So far, this has resulted in booking 2 travel adventures, 2 vacations, and one trip somewhere in between as well as a couple concerts, one class, and putting together a number of projects and new activities (I anticipate a few good posts coming out of all of these).
Daily Plan, What Did I get right?
Excercise, the importance of self awareness, and the challenges of doing this alone.
Exercise works for a shot of endorphins way better than poor substitutes like alcohol or fast food. This is one area I give myself very little flexibility and I have been working out 4-6 days per week. I have found that it works well to target exercise at the same time each day. For me, it feels like doing this gets my metabolism in a pattern of expecting exercise at that time. If I wait too long, beyond that time I run out of energy and need to eat and then wait a bit before exercising (increasing the risk of finding an excuse to not do it). I don’t want to be captain obvious here but exercise is good for you! It benefits your heart and vessels, builds muscle and bone, lowers the risk of diabetes and some cancers, makes you happier, makes you smarter, and makes you less fat and generally able to physically kick ass. The research does not lie and exercise never fails to leave me more upbeat, energized, and seeing the possibilities of the day.
The challenges of doing this alone have proven real as well. There are certainly days where I wake up feeling down or questioning this path versus other things that I could be doing (more on this one to come). It can be lonely to be living a path that no one else around you is and there is no shortage of judgement from friends and family when you are attempting an alternative lifestyle of sorts. Because of this, I am working on meeting up with others who are similar and I have had some good experiences and met a few great people so far. I would like to do more of this (if you are in the Denver area feel free to reach out). The other thing that helps with the challenges of doing this alone has been mindfulness and meditation.
Since I have left my job, I have really committed to mindfulness and am proud to say that it has been one of my successes so far. Each morning, I wake up and take stock of how I am feeling and I also ask why I may be feeling that way. If there is some real world cause that I have to take action on, then I work it into my plan for the day. However, more often it is those chemical reactions sparking around. and some meditation can be useful. The weather doesn’t define your day but can affect it and needs to be dealt with. If you learn to read the signs like the wind, pressure, clouds, etc, you can understand what may be coming and manage it. For me, these tend to be sleep, diet, exercise, caffeine / alcohol. And, unlike the wind or barometric pressure, I can actually control these. Personally, what started as a morning awareness has become more of a continuous habit and it has been eye opening how much more the things mentioned above affect me than I previously saw. I am a pretty emotionally resilient guy but this awareness has changed my decision making for better accounting of the cost of a late night movie or a latte for example. I still choose it sometimes but I better account for the tradeoffs.
One thing I am hoping to do more of is help people. I am not comfortable discussing charitable work because I have this weird complex about the purity of the act and that being tainted if it is made public. There is a hilarious episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where Ted Danson’s character anonymously donates a wing to a hospital but everyone knows that it was him and heaps praise onto him because he did it anonymously. This being said, I would like to do more. I am also hoping to help more of those aspiring to live life outside the maze and have been pretty active in responding and trying to weigh in with various online communities.
I hope this update of my daily plan gives some insight into what has worked and what I have changed in order to perhaps model off of for your own journey. I have found this new more flexible daily plan to work well and I better understand which activities I am most productive at during certain times of the day. I have also seen benefits from exercise and self awareness. I am excited to continue work on a music project that I have going, doing some independent learning, planning and undertaking more adventures as well as continuing investment and real estate work. I look forward to connecting with and helping others through this site and in other ways as well.
