Today I listened to a great podcast with Peter Attia (bio) and Ryan Holiday (bio) where they discussed strategies for staying calm, healthy and productive during the prolonged quarantine, and the one thing they spoke about that really resonated with me was the importance of a routine. Here are two great quotes from the discussion:
“You don’t control the fact that you’re stuck in your house. You don’t control that. . . but you do decide what you’re going to use this time for.”
– Ryan Holiday“As awkward as this is, this feeling, this helplessness, there’s not a huge amount of value in just being upset about it. I mean, yeah, it feels good in the moment, but it doesn’t really produce much benefit in the long run.”
– Peter Attia
For me, the antidote to the feeling of hopelessness while I’m stuck at home is structure. So in the spirit of the podcast, I thought I’d share the routine I’ve been sticking to for the past two weeks as I adjust to the work from home lifestyle and to Anne being away with her family:
5:30am: Wake up. I’m normally up this early in order to have plenty of time to run before work, so even though I’m no longer running in the morning, I decided I should wake up at the same time to maintain some normalcy while I’m working from home.
5:30am-5:45am: Wake up exercises. I’ve been trying a variety of different techniques to try to shake off the sleep cobwebs, but right now what I’ve been doing is chugging a large glass of water, splashing my face with water, and doing ten jumping jacks or pushups. All of these ideas came directly from Tim Ferriss but seem to do the trick – I feel like I’m fully awake much quicker than if I don’t run through the brief routine.
5:45am-7:15am: 90 minutes of writing. I’ve only been at it for two weeks, but it has felt very natural to swap out my morning run for a morning writing session. A lot of the same elements that draw me to a morning run make writing that early in the day appealing as well – for one, the fact that it’s dark when I begin and light when I finish. I usually eat some yogurt and drink tea while I’m writing, and so far my only rule has been this: just write. If I’m not feeling whatever piece I’m working on, then I will pivot and start writing something a little easier and lighter (i.e. 5 Favorite Sandwiches).
7:15am-7:30am: Shower and get dressed. I’ve obviously gotten less formal with what I wear, but I still like to wear real clothes: a t-shirt and khakis. I don’t miss the button downs but am worried that if I started wearing anything more casual I would stop taking work as seriously.
7:30am-8:30am: Commute to the office. I’ve also been maintaining a block of time for a “commute,” even with no office to commute to. What this represents in practice is an hour or so walk around Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO before I get started with work each morning. My commute to the office, which I mostly spent catching up on podcasts, used to be one of my favorite times of the day, so keeping something similar in my schedule has been really important. I’ve also never really walked around my neighborhood in the morning, since I’m always so focused on getting to work, so the opportunity to explore at a different time of day has been exciting.
8:30am-5:30pm: Work. I guess this would still be my longest single block of time each day (8 hours), but now that I’m working from home it doesn’t feel that way. I spend a good chunk of time checking in with my team in the morning, to figure out what needs to be done for the day, but the rest of the time I can spend as I choose. The nice thing is that, given the quarantine, most people are a lot more respectful of everyone’s time, and so each day is mostly focused on high-priority items. So if there is something I need to do that I know will take two hours, I can manage my day around that and get a lot of other things done. I can make lunch, call my parents, do laundry… all things that I’ve previously had to squeeze into my weeknights or weekends a lot less efficiently. It’s not that there’s less work, it’s just that there are fewer interruptions and the “downtime” that I used to spend chatting with coworkers or going for walks can now be spent doing personal chores around the house.
5:30pm-7:30pm: Afternoon run/walk. I’ve been meeting up with Matt, a friend from Amex, everyday for a run in the park. Beyond Anne, there’s never been someone I have met up with so frequently to debrief about the day and discuss what’s going on in the world. It’s been a pretty interesting experience. I’d imagine it’s sort of like two neighbors catching up over a backyard fence after work. The strangest thing is that we lived in the same neighborhood before the quarantine, but the social isolation during the day these last two weeks has made some level of interaction at the end of each day more necessary than it otherwise would have been.
7:30pm-8:00pm: Dinner. Nothing too interesting here, particularly because of the quarantine. Mostly some combination of tortillas, eggs, spinach and rice. Usually hang out a bit with Jake as well.
8:00pm-8:15pm: Second shower. Absolute necessity.
8:15pm-9:00pm or later: Read in bed. The nicest thing about quarantine is that I’m able to do everything I want to in a day and still have the option to go to sleep at 9pm. Although that’s really early, it makes getting up the next day and doing it all over again that much easier. I’ve also been taking the opportunity to read for longer than I usually do each night, and have been able to get through books a lot faster as a result.
There you have it. My quarantine routine. It’s nothing special, but I think it has been pretty important for me personally to keep a level head and continue to do the things I want to do throughout this whole ordeal.