The Ideal Daily Routine

Your 5-9’s matter.

We only have so many hours to walk this earth, feel the sun on our skin, capture photographs of people smiling, pet happy dogs and enjoy an amazing cup of coffee. We also have to do silly things like get dressed up in slacks, change diapers, and take out the trash. Living life to the fullest is an art, and every human being is (hopefully) creating something amazing with theirs.

For simplicity’s sake, this is the ideal routine for me (even Chat GPT agreed). All jokes aside, it has taken me years to finally figure out how to fit in everything I wanted and needed to do, still get sleep, pet the dog, and get both of my businesses running. This is what an ideal day looks like for me.

For the record, I have been able to maintain this for a few weeks at a time, and I have the greatest days of my life where I feel on top of the world, but I would be lying if I said I was anything close to regular or perfect with it. The point is that I try, I do it when it most benefits me and I keep it up until I have to sacrifice sleep or a time shift to get something else accomplished in my world. Nevertheless, the magnificent daily routine:

5am: Alarm goes off, I ignore it (or I’ll get up and hold a quiet time with God)

5:05,10,15am: More alarms, I finally get up. I typically sleep in my gym clothes so I can put my shoes on, mix some Huel protein powder with chocolate milk, and be on my way to the gym.

5:30am- Leave for gym

5:45am- Workout

7am- Simple breakfast (egg bowl, avocado, blue cheese, bacon, hot sauce)

7:20am- Shower, change, minimal makeup, hair in claw clip or braided

8am- Work

5pm- Leave work

5:30pm- Walk and train the dog

6:30pm- Dinner

7pm- Any tasks that can possibly be done in the next hour

8:30pm- Wind-Down routine (house reset, shower, lay out clothes for tomorrow)

9pm- Bed

As you can see, it’s pretty efficient. It allows what is most important to me (weightlifting) to be accomplished first thing in the morning. This gets me to be fully awake, present, and calm for the rest of my day and honestly I have had the most amazing and productive days when I have gotten to bed on time and gotten up on time in this rhythm. One thing I noticed participating in this routine was that I was more cognizant of how much I could expect myself to get done after work each day. Knowing I only have 1 hour for tasks meant the others just got spread out across my week instead of believing I could spend one entire Monday meal prepping, cleaning, doing laundry, training the dog, and still make it to bed on time.

This routine has helped me balance my to-do list with my capacity list and still accomplish amazing things.