I’ve recently noticed that being part of Recurse Center brings an unexpected perk, one that I can finally put into words. When you see so many great people coding & writing interesting stuff, you draw some excitement and encouragement out of it. It’s some sort of unintentional, passive, benigne peer pressure.

After reading quite a few blog posts about morning routines (something I’m increasingly fascinated by), I decided to write my own, describing the current ritual I hone. This is a work in progress, and it only describes my daily routine in London – because when I travelling, it is completely thrown out of the window.

  1. 6h00: wake up Waking up quite early has provided me invaluable ease of mind and a constant flow of productive/creative time. Getting home after an 8h job and trying to do something productive/creative doesn’t work for me, I’m already out of stamina.
  2. 6h00 - 6h10: browse social networks I admit this is not the most productive or healthy activity I could do, but the way I have my Facebook and Instagram customised brings me a good ratio of useful updates on a few friends, good information about my interests, and a dash of creativity (mostly from Instagram). I hope I’ll be able to replace this bit with something less passive in the future.
  3. 6h10 - 6h30: practice a language on Duolingo Given my current trip to South America, I’m currently practicing Spanish. As a native Portuguese speaker, it has been easy as a breeze. We share the same language base and most of the vocabulary.
  4. 6h30 - 7h00: do a few pushups, stretch, meditate This is mostly a gentle nudge to my body, telling it that sleep is definitely over. It also helps to keep at bay any morning angst i usually feel.
  5. 7h00 - 7h30: run at least 5k I try to do this once every two days, so I end up running 3 to 4 times each week. On days I don’t run, I just go straight to…
  6. 7h30 - 8h00: shower, breakfast, and coffee It’s almost 8h and you already did quite a lot, so a good breakfast is required (usually eggs with a lot of vegetables). After it, a cup of amazing Pact coffee brewed with my Aeropress will fuel me while I…
  7. 8h00 - 9h30: work on side projects This time block means literally anything I might have to work on: writing, designing, coding, brainstorming, email catching up… Anything productive, really. These past two months have been mostly to brainstorm talks I might be able to do in JavaScript or CSS conferences. However, with my recent plan of joining the 100:10:1 effort, I’ll start converging more & more into planning and codding of the 10 ideas I picked.
  8. 9h30-10h00: commute Finally, my personal morning comes to an end, as my professional one fades in. I’ve had the pleasure of being able to walk to work in the past 7 months. However, I’ll soon have to get the tube again, as we moved offices. Less walking time will mean more reading time, so I guess it balances out.