The Daily Routine of a Full-Time Writer

How a full-time content writer creates her remote work schedule

https://www.instagram.com/theevagutierrez/

Consider this routine an average of most of my days. I don’t want to act like every day is so picture-perfect, but for the most part, I have a good schedule.

I’m focused on habit building and I love what I do, so it’s easy for me to do what’ll help me be the best content writer and marketer for my clients.

Here’s the daily routine of a full-time writer.

6:30 am-8 am: On days I work out, I wake up around 6:30 am, do weight lifting exercises for about one hour, and then come back home. To be noted: I’m only up this early because my partner has to be at his office by 9 am. On days we don’t work out, we’ll wake up around 7:30 am. Regardless of a gym day or not, we’ll do a meditation (we’re ranging at doing meditations 60% of the time right now and building up the habit more and more).

8 am-8:45 am: Shower, get ready, and turn my notifications on. I work out with my phone on Do Not Disturb mode and try to keep all notifications off until I’ve gotten ready for the day. While I want to be patient about letting my phone into my day, I do have clients in time zones ahead of mine (I’m in PT), so I do want to get my notifications turned on fairly soon so that I can make sure they have everything they need/their questions answered as needed.

8:45 am-9:15 am: Breakfast, listening to Robinhood Snacks, reading the Morning Brew newsletter, and doing any quick work a client needs (for example, sending a document, a quick edit—under 1 minute—, etc.).

9:15 am-9:30 am: I’ll either start working if I’m going to work from home that day, or I’ll cook my lunch so that I can take it with me to the co-working space or coffee shop that I’ll work from. I’m a huge fan of working from co-working spaces and have been utilizing a Deskpass membership recently. I work from home 20% of the time and from somewhere else 80% of the time.

9:15 am-12 pm: If I’m working from a co-working space or a coffee shop, I’ll commute there during this time and then start working when I get there. I’ll also answer any emails and Instagram DMs I have while I’m in my Uber there.

I’ll also post my Instagram stories while I’m commuting, walking to the coffee shop, or before I start working. Since these take me about 1–2 minutes to post, I can get them uploaded and then not think about social media until later that day.

When I start working, I’ll have all of my emails and Slack messages answered. Then, I’ll look at my task list that I made the day before. Each task is assigned a priority level, so there’s the #1 task I need to do that day, the #2, #3, #4, #5, and everything else falls under that.

For example, if I have to send a weekly newsletter or I need to publish a podcast episode, that’s usually my #1 task for the day because it’s so timely.

Other client work that I’ll be doing at this time is:

• Writing digital marketing articles
• Uploading articles to Wordpress
• Writing show notes for podcasts
• Writing a personal development weekly newsletter
• Checking email metrics
• Writing LinkedIn posts
• Invoicing clients

12–2 pm: When it comes to this part of my schedule, the times aren’t set in stone. Depending on what time I started working, how much work I have to do, and how timely that work is, I’ll either work until 2ish before I eat lunch or I’ll eat around 12 if everything is all done. While I eat I’ll usually watch Youtube videos or if there is someone next to me interested in talking then I’ll have a conversation with them.

This is also the time that I’ll host workshops or live Q&As in my community for novice content writers looking to work with better clients and make more money.

1 pm-5 pm: By this time I’m either on my fifth most important task or I’ve completed it already. This is when I get into the smaller tasks that need to get done (ex. accounting for my freelance business, checking on Facebook ads for my Content Writers Mastermind, etc.) or I’ll do write things for my own brand, like Medium articles.

I find that I’m able to write at least 2 Medium articles in a row and try to keep my writing flow state going for as long as I can once it’s started. I’ll also answer any replies made to my Instagram story or posts and scroll Twitter to see if there are any tweets that I want to share on my story.

5 pm-7 pm: Commute home, eat dinner, or eat dinner after I commute home. I try to intermittent fast as I often as I can, so if I can have my dinner finished by 7 pm latest that’s ideal. That’ll mean that when I wake up at 7 I’ll be 12 hours into a fast and anything past that should give me the benefits of fasting. This is when I’ll check my word count for the day, just for fun.

I don’t hold weight to achieving a certain amount of words written per day because some days I need to focus on logistics while other days I have the time to write 5,000+ words. I do like to see where I stand though and this helps give me a sense of achievement for the days that I wrote a lot.

I use the Word Counter App for Macbook to check my word count. Here’s what it looks like:

Word Counter App for MacBook

6 pm-8 pm: After 6 pm I’ll scroll on social media, watch Youtube videos, read, or keep working. I try to stop working around 8 pm or else I find it’s harder for me to fall asleep. Ideally, I’m reading about 15–20 pages in a book a night. physically read a paperback/hardcover book (no audiobooks or ebooks) every night for two reasons. 1) I want to shut down technology and blue light around 8 pm to maintain my circadian rhythm, and 2) I want to read how an author is explaining something or telling a story so that I can learn how they get their point across in their writing. As a writer, this is an essential part of crafting my skill.

8 pm-10 pm: My partner comes home around 8 pm and we’ll talk about our workdays, current events, what we learned/experienced that day…really anything. We have really thoughtful conversations and this is one of my favorite parts of the day.

10pm: Bedtime. I don’t usually fall asleep at 10 pm but I do want to be in bed winding down. If I’m not tired I’ll read more of my book or keep talking with my partner. I’ll also set my outfit for the next day to the side and get everything that I’ll need ready so everything feels more ‘automated’ in the morning.

I’ll say it again because it’s important to remember that this is the average of most of my days. Some days we oversleep. Other days we wake up earlier. Some days it takes me 45 minutes to get my lunch together. Other days I’m in traffic longer than expected.

But this is generally the schedule that I stick to, and it’s the schedule that works best for me. Copy it, reiterate it, and make it your ideal writing schedule.