Updated day in the life – my weekday schedule

 
“Day in the life” posts and videos are definitely some of my favourites to read and watch. I always find it interesting to see how somebody’s daily routine differs vs. what I am up to. I’ve done a few of these over the years, and as my circumstances have changed, the structure of my days has changed too. From starting at the gym, to my role at work evolving, to working through the COVID-WFH period, and now, starting at a whole new firm. So – below is a little overview of what a typical weekday for me looks like currently, I also feature a fab new brand discovery – IDentity Lingerie – with some nightwear bits for you to try!
 

 

07:00 – Wake up / eat breakfast / start work

Mornings have gone from 06:00 pre-pandemic (to go to the gym before work), to around 08:00 in the midst of it (to wake up and roll out of bed), to around 07.00-07.15 starts now in my new job. Whilst the extra 1 hour lie in at my old gig was pretty nice, I am naturally an early bird and find that when I kickstart my day whilst the rest of the world has yet to wake up, everything feels better organised

I eat breakfast first thing – usually some chicken sausages, eggs and toast, or lean bacon medallions, eggs and toast, or cereal (currently loving Special K and oat milk). After eating, I get properly geared up for work.

Before I delve into my mornings, for those that don’t know, this is what I do: I currently work in investment banking and I started a new role about a month ago – it’s exactly what I was doing before, but at a new firm. I won’t bore ya’ll, but in a nutshell my role is markets focussed, client focussed and execution focussed. And no, my role has nothing to do with trading. If you’re interested in learning more – it’s called a “debt capital markets” role.

I start the day at my desk by clearing through any overnight e-mails, and if I was too lazy to clear my inbox before logging off the night before, then I also power through that. Whilst I’m doing this, I usually also end up catching up on overnight news by default as a good portion of the e-mails in my inbox in the morning are re-caps of what has happened in the world and in markets over the last 24 hours. Then I make my to-do list for the day. Along with daily to-do lists, each week I also create an e-mail addressed to myself (called e.g. “w/c 30th August”) that I write in every day. I save it as a draft all week and then send it to myself on Fridays before I log off, to file away into a “Daily Notes” file. I use this to write notes from any calls/meetings/interesting or relevant reads during the week. For example, if I want to call a client, I’ll scribble down notes in here of what I want to relay to them and then I’ll supplement my notes with what I get back from them. I also try to write out a key to-do for each client for the week. This file/these e-mails are really for my eyes only – but I refer back to them often if I want to remember something. I find it extremely useful.
 

11:30/12 – Lunch

I crack on with work throughout the morning doing… whatever it is I need to do. Calls, meetings, presentations, excels – whatever the day calls for. I usually have my music or a podcast on and I plug away up until my belly starts to grumble. Because I’m eating breakfast so early these days, it means that my lunches are earlier too. Around 11:30-12:00 I’ll break for lunch if I can. I don’t have a defined “lunch hour” really – so long as I get my work done, there’s flexibility to do whatever. It’s pretty rare that I’ll take a lot of time off of the desk for lunch – that typically only tends to happen at the height of the summer when workflow is slow and everyone wants to go out and enjoy the sun… and even that was pre-pandemic. I tend to eat at the desk whilst being distracted by my phone; as I’m in front of my computer, I can reply to any messages or address anything coming in if need be.
 

18:30 / 19:00 – Finish work

I finish work a bit earlier these days, usually by 7. The last I pulled a genuinely extremely late night was earlier this year at some point before I broke for annual leave as I wanted to wrap everything up before I left. The late nights do indeed happen, but compared to the earlier years of my career, it’s not as much of a regular occurrence.
 

~20:00/20:30 – Gym

Next comes the gym! Pre-COVID I was gyming around 6.30AM each morning, but WFH brought more flexibility, so I scrapped that and introduced more sleep instead. Now my new job starts too early for a (reasonably timed) morning gym session, so we’re back to evening sessions. I go to the gym around 4-5x a week, I try to land at 5 but during busy (or hungover…) weekends, I end up at the former. My current routine:

• Day 1: 10 minutes on the stepper & legs (quads focussed)
• Day 2: 10 minute sprint & upper body
• Day 3: 10 minutes of skipping & HIIT
• Day 4: 10 minute sprint & legs (glutes & hamstrings focussed)
• Day 5: 30 minute treadmill run & 10 minutes of abs

I tend to workout for 45 minutes to 1 hour max. I used to spend over an hour at the gym some years ago, but I don’t have the time or energy to do that anymore.
 

Dinner

Dinner time depends on a number of things – who finishes work earlier out of me and Levi, if we finish late or early and if we can be bothered to cook. Generally, dinner is positioned around what time we end up going to the gym. We cook dinner most days and order out on Fridays, now and again we’ll be lazy or busy and Deliveroo during a planned cooking day. At dinner, we will also watch a show and on the weekends, a movie. Currently we’re (slowly) watching This is Us, about to start The Wire, and we also both just finished The Office US.
 

21:30+ Wind down and personal work

Once it starts to get later in the evening, it’s time to wind down. I’ll usually get into bed, open my laptop and kick off with ‘personal work’ – that is, the non-corporate work work. For example, it’s 22:00 right now as I clean up this blog post, ready to publish tomorrow.

Earlier in the week, if I haven’t been able to get to it during the weekend, then I will be writing/editing and publishing a new post for here the week. However, most of the week, I’m working on stuff for Soulful Kitchen (launching in Q4). Since I have SK, this blog and my fitness Instagram, I try to compartmentalise everything. For my blog – the goal is 1 post a week; for my fitness page – I’m transitioning to mostly posting Reels which are quicker to edit; with the rest of my spare time and energy, it’s all Soulful Kitchen. Friday is the day I take off of all ‘personal work’.

After the ‘personal work’ period passes, I then watch some of my own stuff – usually YouTube, but maybe something on Netflix or Prime.

A side note – if I’m too tired, there’s no ‘personal work’ at all. I’ll fall asleep early or just chill on my laptop. I know that toxic workaholism is sweeping the internet right now – and that’s why I felt it important for me to drop this in. Listen to your body, you don’t want to burnout.
 

00:00-00:30 Sleep

Recently, after years and years of throwing on whatever old top I could find for bed, I’ve started wearing pyjamas to bed again. You can call it me trying to feel ‘put together’ in that aspect of my life. I’ve been loving the black satin short pyjamas from IDentity Lingerie* in particular, they look very luxurious but are also super cosy. IDentity Lingerie is a small, family-run brand from the UK who ethically handmake all of their items. To bring some luxury back to your nightwear (or lingerie), I strongly recommend trying out some of their high quality pieces!
 

 
And there we have it – my updated day in the life! I’ve mentioned it before – but I’ve had times in the past where I was trying to squeeze in so much that I became overwhelmed and burnt out. In contrast – where I’m at now… it feels pretty good.

Check out some of my other days in the life to see how my routine has changed over the years:

• Day in the Life – What’s New? April 2020
• Updated Day in the Life (everything from work, to food, to workouts…) May 2018
• Day in the Life: What I Really Get up to Everyday November 2017