Remotee: Full day’s schedule, working and being with family
A story of how I break my daily time trying to fill as many parts as I can without burning down!
This is my first story. I would like to consider this a proper intro of what I do and who I am now. I hope I can follow up with more stories on tools I use and things I do that might be interesting.
First a little backstory as introduction. I’ve been working remotely for 8 years now. It was a clear choice back in 2010 that had to do with life quality and I can say that this still stays true.
In that period I built a strong relation with my first employer and a good connection with that industry, switched to my current job at Transifex and worked my relations anew, and created a family. We are a family of four living on a village in Greece called Monemvasia.
Each year passing added up exponentially in my experience and hopefully there are great times ahead :).
So let’s jump forward to now, currently a Product Manager at Transifex in one of the development teams.
Day starts at 06:30, with setting kids up for school. I would describe this process as balancing on a rope, the slightest deviation from the program can spiral into losing time and go off schedule! Fortunately, kids are growing up and things smooth out.
Workout 08:00 — 09:00, that really helps me in getting energised! Currently I don’t do cardio exercises because of a back issue I’m recovering from. For the last 6 years I’ve been doing T-25 and Insanity workouts by Beachbody and Shaun-T. This has a great impact in my energy levels! I have noticed that I feel more depleted in periods that I don’t do any exercises at all.
Catching up prep-work 09:30–10:30, in this time I usually catchup with my emails or slack and setting up my daily to-do list, lately I’ve adopted parts of GTD and everything is smoother. This is more or less a focus time to prepare for what’s coming up next. There are rarely calls during that time. After checking and replying to any emails in the inbox, email app closes/terminates.
Team syncing, communication & work 10:30–13:00, where the whole team has the daily standup and we start syncing on daily tasks and work to be done. Usually this time is heavy on calls and slack chats. There are a few more sync-ups with specific team members to get a better sense of how I could assist more from the product side of things.
If more time is available I pick a small item from my to-do list to work on. At around 12:30 I have a reminder to check my emails again. Again after checking and replying the email-app closes.
Midday break & emails check 13:00–13:40-ish, this is where the whole team stops for lunch. I follow the exact same schedule so that we have more overlaps. Usually while eating I try to read some articles I’ve pinned or watch some videos to relax my mind from work-activities.
Focus time & meetings 14:00–17:00, this is the core time to focus on a bigger task. Of course there are plenty of meeting all around that require attendance but usually there is a clear focus window of 1,5 hours.
During this time I usually have one big item in my to-do list to focus on. Any progress that I do on items is reflecting back on my to-do list. I try to communicate results/progress in a persistent medium and not on slack, so it’s either an email or a comment in the respecting platform (Jira, Github, Invision, Google docs,….)
Again when reaching the 17:00 mark a have setup another reminder to check my emails again.
Teams syncing & wrapping up 17:00–18:00, as our team in Transifex is distributed between Greece and California in US this is a time-window we use to communicate. We have set various team meetings for members on both sides of the ocean (Product, syncing with Customer Success Managers, Design).
These meetings are pretty important as we get to know each other more and jump into some important matters that need our attention. As we value and appreciate this face time we try to optimize the way we conduct these meetings by preparing detailed agendas and having done some async work on a doc or email so that we skip any unnecessary talks/introductions in the calls.
For days that there is no meeting set, I usually continue working on items from my to-do list and have set a reminder around 17:00 to check again my emails and wrap up on what I’m working on.
Relax, family time 18:00–21:00, since I’m working remote I don’t have the commuting time to free up my mind. If we can afford some time I like to simply lie on the sofa doing nada before I jump in and start playing with my kids. Provided the weather is good we could have a walk out or go at basketball/activities field to meet with other kids (I’m bringing in my basketball just in case :P ). There are times we play at home or kids’ friends come over and we have some free time.
Around 20:00 we’re getting ready for lunch so that the kids are ready for sleep by 21:00. There is bedtime reading and it’s kind of fun time!
More relax and getting ready for next day 21:00–24:00, at this time me and my wife usually setup some things for the next day like cooking or cleaning up the kitchen and then we try to relax by watching a movie, series or simply hang around and talk.
This is the time that usually one of us is exhausted and simply lays on the sofa. There are periods that we take good advantage of this time, and there are periods that we simply do nada. Both are welcomed :)
More or less this concludes a typical workday. This schedule is a product of a lot of iterations, fails, retries along the way! I hope you found this interesting. I also hope I’ll find the time to share more details on my work/life balance that are hidden between each line of this post and might be useful for more people.
Have a great day ahead of you!
