My Current Ideal Day

I spoke about my ideal day recently on the podcast, and it’s worth repeating some elements and exploring more in greater detail. The reason why this is so important is due to something the Stoics (and a lot of other philosophies and philosophers) remind us about. Memento Mori. Remember that you have to die. Each day is, ultimately, one day closer to the grave. Therefore, we should be pursuing something meaningful to each day. We need to build and structure a set of ideal days so we enjoy our life day to day, rather than waiting for the (we hope better) future. It’s not just about living for the weekend, or about slopping through the majority of the year so you can have a week or two vacation at the end. Disclaimer: I love my life, so please don’t misinterpret that I am unhappy, or longing for something better.

Now, we move to the second point. We need to fill our own cups first each day. This is so I, and we, have the energy to be able to effectively serve and lead others. By spending part of each day in activities that are fulfilling to us, we are able to recharge, ensuring we are able to give proper attention to others. We should shoulder as much responsible as we can handle (credit to Jordan B. Peterson). And one way to handle more is to ensure we have time each day to recharge. After all, if we are exhausted and not happy, we are unable to serve others.

What does an ideal day look life? What does it involve? Whilst this are deeply personal choices and decision, I do believe that they need to have the following six elements:

• health
• work
• family
• leisure
• some future planning
• time to be in the present

What is leisure? It’s our social connections, our hobbies, our relationships. It’s time on the xbox, or with a good book, or hiking through nature. It can be part goal orientated – e.g. walk 10km to train for a hike – or it can be going on a walk for the sake of being out and about.

My current ideal day starts with having about eight hours of good sleep, rising around 5:00am (at the moment my alarm wakes me, and I would, in a perfect world, like to rise naturally around this time). From there, I grab a glass of water and then turn on my Apple TV to start listening to a podcast whilst I foam roll and stretch. This allows my body to wake up and get warmed up ready for the day ahead. I do these exercises gently, so as not to put too much stress on the body. Rather, my focus is on waking up the muscles and stretching myself out.

I grab my gym back and walk to the gym, getting about 10 minutes of sun rays whilst I’m at it as an added benefit. This also helps me to wake up. At the gym, it’s time for a quick stretch again and lighter weights to prepare myself for the heavy lifting session ahead. I usually spend 45 minutes at the gym.

Back at home, I turn on my laptop and make myself a nice cup of coffee (black, rotating the various flavours), light a candle, and sit down on the floor to write. At the moment, it’s building out my articles for the blog, either in WordPress, or on the notes app to brainstorm structure and themes. As I am still building this habit, once I write about 350 words I stop, and them move to reading a book for about 30 minutes.

I am extremely fortunate, because right now my ideal day as so far been what I do most days. This is where we deviate, as now there is now a gap between my ideal and what I am currently doing. I would love to then engage in deep work for four to five hours a day. To work with others to solve interesting problems, coach them, run workshops, be engaged in interesting dialogue. This is a work in progress, and it is coming, slowly but surely.

After deep work, having accomplished a lot already for the day, this then leaves the afternoon ‘free.’ For me, this is time to spend with the family, with friends, to go climbing, to dig in to a good book, to go for a hike. A whole bunch of different tasks that I can select and do, and be present in them.

Around 5:30pm I then cook a healthy dinner with my fiancé, music playing, dancing around the kitchen. It’s connection time for us too, and we enjoy the act of talking, cutting up food and preparing, and being silly. For dinner, we sit at the table or out on the balcony to enjoy our meal.

If we are not out socialising, we then have our screen time for the evening, and watch an episode of one of the shows we are working through, or the latest AEW match. Then it’s time to wind down from our devices. This routine is by taking a hot shower, stretching out, and then reading in bed with a candle lit. This helps to create good inputs to encourage good sleep. Ideally, we are then going to bed around 9:30pm (unless we are out with friends).

That’s the current ideal day. Luckily, and thankfully, I am living most of this already each day. This is skewed in many ways towards a Monday to Friday day. On the weekends, there is a lot of flexibility to shift things around, or not do them. Deep work might not be present. Movement and fitness might be the majority of the day as we are out climbing with friends, and so forth.

We have strong foundations in place, and I’m excited to move towards building out deep work. I’ll write more in other posts as to how I am doing this from a work perspective. Ultimately, it will involve a pivot, moving to the adjacent possibility. Using my skillset in a slightly different way to retain my strengths and open new doors. Importantly, it involves giving myself the permission to do so, and accepting the fear and uncertainty along the way. More on that later. For now, my focus is also continuing on living out the ideal day, which in reality, is pretty darn good.