Day in the Life

A Day in the Life - Episode 84 of The Slow Home Podcast

I have to be honest, I’ve been super hesitant to record this episode as I thought it would be too boring for pretty much everyone on the planet. But I’ve been asked countless times for more detail into how we structure our days, so this show looks at how a typical day unfolds at our house. 

Well, at least that was the plan…

When Ben and I sat down to talk about what a typical day actually looks like, it took about 3.7 seconds to realise there is no such thing for us anymore. So instead what you have is a wide-ranging look at how we manage our time on a day-to-day basis (we’re unsurprisingly quite different) and how the change in our work situations has impacted the rhythm of our home.

While things don’t necessarily look the same from day to day, during the week I’m a big fan of time-chunking and break my time into different functions:

    • Early Morning: Quiet time. This sometimes means meditation, yoga, going for a walk or writing. Other mornings it means getting some uninterrupted work done and being dressed and ready before everyone else is up (this gives me a ridiculous sense of satisfaction!)
    • 7am-ish: Getting everyone else ready for the day. Breakfasts, lunches, do homework, get the kids dressed and ready, do a load of laundry, clean something, sometimes walk with the kids to school.
    • 9:30-10:30am-ish: Doing stuff. That might be helping out at school, going for a coffee or doing some housework.
    • 10:30am-2:30pm: Work time. I spend these hours recording, editing, writing, creating, working with podcast clients, planning new shows, responding to emails etc.
    • 2:30pm - School Pick Up: Dinner prep, tidy up.
    • School Pick-Up - Dinner: Homework, play, dinner prep, etc. If Ben’s home and I need to work he takes on this time and vice versa.
    • Dinner, Bath, Books, Bed
  • Ben and I Chill: TV, reading, work, bed.

I think this approach comes from having to be across a lot of different areas of life (home, kids, work, personal, family) and knowing I simply cannot give 100% of my energy to all areas at any one given time - or any one given week for that matter.

Ben, on the other hand, simply gets done what needs to be done at that moment and doesn’t need to play too many mind games in order to do so. Which sounds a hell of a lot simpler to me, but I’m pretty happy with the system I’ve worked out for myself, regardless!

We also talk about the idea of tilting, whether we're more or less stressed than we were a year ago, and whether our life is busy, or merely full.

I actually really enjoyed this conversation, despite my initial misgivings, and hope you do too. That being said, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below: how do you manage to find a sense of peace in your days? Or what areas are you still working on?

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Head over to iTunes to subscribe to the show and play the episode.

Or you can listen to the show directly, simply by hitting the Play button above. Enjoy!

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Show Notes:

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8 Hours Sleep #4 - The Slow Home Experiment

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8 Hours Sleep #3 - The Slow Home Experiment