Working and studying at the same time
Or how I could make my life even more complicated. A personal story about my day-to-day routine these days.
In this article I am going to describe a typical day in my life from the last couple of hectic months. This may give you an idea of how you could make the most out of your daily rituals. I want to focus in particular on my work days and how I am able to study at a design school, build products at Edookit, work on freelance side projects, and still be able to run, cook, read, learn and, occasionally, travel.
I would be lying if I said that I don’t feel overwhelmed by all of it sometimes. I grew to a point (oh, I’m getting old) where it became normal to me to spend my days being very active although I spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer screen.
At the end of every day I always reflect on what I achieved and learned that day. Was it a successful day? What was my work progress? Am I closer to my goals? Am I becoming a good designer? These are just few of the questions that are going through my mind when I am falling asleep.
Most of the time, mornings are crucial. If I am not productive in the morning it is highly likely that that day will be an unproductive one. Breakfast is by far my favourite meal of the day. I can easily spend an hour eating my breakfast. That is also why I get up early. While eating breakfast, I plan out my day. I go through my calendar and task list to highlight everything I am going to do. It gives me a clear overview of the time structure of that day. After that I end up reading some news on the internet so that I have an idea on what is actually going on in the world.
I live in Copenhagen, Denmark, which is why I bike everywhere. The house I live in is in a suburban village called Taastrup. It’s not possible for me to ride my bike all the way to school, I also have to take the S-train. The train ride takes about 30 minutes, which gives me time to read articles on Medium. After entering the city centre, I move around solely by bike.
Most of the projects at our school are team-based, which results in us devoting the majority of our time to team meetings and ideation sessions. After a couple of hours of designing and listening I already find myself eating lunch. I then leave for home and start working on my tasks. My task list is differentiated into projects. School (readings, assignments), personal (writing on medium, portfolio update…), Edookit (tasks for Edookit) and other projects (other companies or projects I am currently working on). My first working session is about 2 hours long. In order to get some rest, I go for a run to clear my head and usually think about a problem I can’t quite figure out. On a normal work day, I run about 8–10 km.
After taking a shower I cook dinner. Something very quick like noodles, chicken, or some kind of potatoes. Honestly, I’m loving it! It makes me think about ingredients that make a good meal the same way visual elements make a good user interface. I am thinking about design all the time. It’s all around us!
My work continues. Currently I found out that my brain is most productive around 9pm to 11pm. I don’t know why, maybe it’s the different environment or something… During my working hours I do all kinds of stuff. I attend Skype meetings, sketching sessions, the actual high-fidelity designing, prototyping, analysing, researching, cooperating with other teams (development, PR, customer support etc.) and making sure everything looks and works as it should. After a couple of hours, I am almost finished with my day. The evening activities vary depending on the deadlines and the amount of work I need to complete. Usually, I end up finishing around 11pm. After that I read, make progress on an online design course, or just watch Netflix until I fall asleep.
The day I’ve described in this article is what many days in my life currently look like. But since my life is constantly changing, my days are most likely going to be different. And that’s not bad. Actually, it’s really good to have diversity in life and since I personally hate stereotypes, my lifestyle suits me very well. At the end of the day, that’s also one of the reasons I wanted to be a designer. Creating something different every day. I hope you find this article interesting and perhaps take something from it. If you liked it please hit the heart button and see you soon.
