A Typical Day in my Life

 

5:00 am

We're staying all night, we never slow down. I think we better do it like we like we doing it n- I quickly switch off my alarm before I start hating the song. It's not always easy to get up at 5:00am, especially since the sun hasn't risen yet. However, I've been working remotely even before it became cool so I don't have to contend with a long commute. I reluctantly sneak out of bed and start with some daily meditation. Waking up early also gives me some time to continue writing. I have a lot of vivid dreams and I get a lot of content from my recorded dreams. Some of them are too bizarre to write down. You can read an example in Surreal Sartorial.

6:15 am

I connect my Just Dance app to my PC and start dancing. It's my way of getting some early quick exercises whiles enjoying my favorite playlist. The Just Dance app tells me I've burnt 90kcal after dancing through my playlist. I have a feeling it's not accurate, but it pleases me nonetheless. After exercising, I make sure to take a quick hot bath. The rest of the time is spent loafing around. 

 8:00 am

On days I want to work from the office, I set off around 7:00. It'll usually take me about 10 mins to get to the office. My work commute is quite smooth, there's not much traffic on most days if I leave for the office around 7. The traffic builds up if I go later.   The first thing I do when I get to the office building is to turn on the AC. The first person in the office usually gets dibs on regulating the AC. There are always coffee beans in the office so I make coffee for myself and for anyone else after me. It's just the office etiquette.

If I'll be working remotely, I make coffee at home. Because there is no commute, I start working significantly earlier than I would if I'd gone to the office. I absolutely love starting work early, not only am I a morning person, I have enough energy to complete some tasks I did not finish the previous day. 

 9:00 am

Once I'm settled in, the first thing I do is open up slack. I work with people living across 15 timezones, so it is very easy for me to miss out on some conversations. I also catch up on some announcements in the channels, DMs and conversations that happened in important channels. I have a JIRA bot within slack that let's me know if I have some assigned tasks or if there are some pull requests for me to review. I must admit, I mostly respond to requests that are usually blocking my fellow engineers, or else I prefer to focus on accomplishing my own tasks.

 10:00 am

I quickly connect with my team and we have a short standup. We connect over Google Meet. We spend this time going over the previous day's priorities, what is blocked, and what we intend to complete on the current day. I also use this opportunity to align myself with the team, or else we could get distracted from the sprint goals.

 10:15 am

I resume working after standup. Sometimes I'm notified of a need from someone during standup, so I immediately try to unblock my teammate. I usually open up JIRA and filter the tasks to the ones assigned to me, then I look at the high priority bugs that will provide a lot of value for our users if they are fixed. Once I'm done unblocking, I will continue working on my tasks. I usually estimate the time I'll spend on tasks so I have a rough idea when I think I'll be done. I'm a bit of a completionist so I really love to complete work on time. I used to be terrible at estimating the amount of work required, but after sometime, my estimates are getting better. The problem is usually with the injections into the sprint, the estimates for them have been pretty inaccurate on my end. However, I think I'm getting better.

 12:15 pm

Because I usually work from home, I always have some food in the fridge I can quickly microwave. If I'm in the office, I usually prefer sitting down with my colleagues who belong to other departments for lunch. I use this time to socialize with the wider team and get a sense of how work is progressing in the office space. I also like talking to people to find out what is going on in the news because I rarely listen to the news, I read just headlines.     I really enjoy being around individuals who love discussing their work and having general conversations with them.

 1:00 pm

I'm not really that productive in the afternoon, so I schedule most of my meetings in the afternoon. We have chapter meetings and team capacity development events mostly in the afternoons. It is usually mornings for some members of the team because we need to book the meetings at times when our work day overlaps. One of the meetings I usually attend are called HiLDAs, High Level Design and Acceptance meetings. When an upcoming feature or change has implications for our infrastructure, we have HiLDAs where the engineers get a chance to ask questions and talk about things that might be overlooked. This is a great opportunity for us to communicate effectively on how we think this feature will affect our work. Some of these meetings are retrospectives and sprint planning, where we find time to discuss what went well during the sprint and what we'd like to be done better in future sprints. To have effective retrospectives, I usually write down my observations throughout the sprint, because there have been times when I forget things that really stood out in the sprint if I don't spend time to reflect.

 2:00 pm

If I've completed some of my tasks, I usually write up documentation at this time. If there are some needs actions from our meetings, I also spend this time coming up with solutions and ideas. At this time, if there are some DMs, I'm able to respond to them. I've adopted the Pomodoro technique, where I work in short bursts so I don't like being interrupted. I'm able to respond to messages during this time. If I'm in the office, I can quickly turn around and talk to my workmates on how to proceed on some tasks. For the most part, I'm focused on cleaning up my tasks and making sure they are properly documented.

 3:00 pm

Around this time, I usually get a ping from fellows who need my response on something. We either connect over Meet or on Slack. If the conversation would benefit the entire team, I ask that we move it to public channels, and we continue the chat from there. The main reason why I prefer this is to help colleagues who might have the same question get context so that anyone can always refer to the answers. Sometimes, the Product Manager can jump in and provide additional context that could be more recent and detailed. 

 4:30 pm

Before my end of the day, I usually leave some notes to myself so that I can pick up where I left off early the next morning. I usually prefer finishing what I'm working on because I'd rather not lose momentum. Of course, some days are more productive than others. I define productivity as being able to complete the tasks I committed to doing. I have noticed that I tend to deprioritize code reviews so I've been trying to commit myself to finish code reviews as much as possible.

 5:30 pm

I'm usually getting ready to pack up and leave if I'm in the office. However, there are some days when I'm super busy at this time. My end of the day is usually mornings for the other team on the other side of the globe so I take the time to work together with them and this could well extend into my evening. I cherish being able to finish work so I don't usually mind these delays. If I'm working from home, I take a walk on the beach (I live very close to the beach btw) then maybe meet up with a friend to chat or maybe play a game for a short while before reclining to bed.