Embracing Parental Advice for a Better Routine

Wake up early. Get some sunlight early in the morning. Eat a good breakfast. Walk around, instead of slouching on your chair. Don’t snack too much. Cook and eat healthy. Exercise. Read. Work Hard.

Be greteful or pray or meditate or stay mindful, depending on what you believe in.

I still find these advice ringing in my ears.

Growing up in a military family in Bangladesh, discipline was key. My loving parents tried their best to bring me up as a disciplined man of value.

Today, I wish I could say that I resonate strongly with the advice above. I don’t.

Instead, I remember them because growing up these were the bane of my existence. I ignored them, opting instead to game, play football, or even worse, scroll mindlessly on my phone.

After some significant life changes in the past 2 years, these timeless advice are coming back to me. Having incorporated a few of these into my daily routine, I was instantly overwhelmed with regret.

No, not because they changed my life for the worse, but because they have drastically improved my life for the better.

Only if I listened to their advice, instead of putting my blindfolds on.

Oh well, better late than never, I guess.

In this blog post, I will discuss how I incorporated timeless advice from my parents into my daily routine, to make my days more focused, productive and mindful.

Principles

There are 3 concepts or principles I want to outline, before listing our a literal timeline of how I plan on going about my day.

    Anchor Moments — Specific, regular events or activities that provide structure and stability to a routine

    Intentional Mindfulness — Purposefully paying attention to the present moment and having an intention behind every action or activity

    Working in Focus Blocks — Dedicate specific work blocks dedicated towards meetings, low-focus execution tasks or deep-focus longer horizon tasks

I have found anchor moments key to having a day that you can be proud of.

These can be anything:

    Eating out vs cooking

    Going to the gym vs binge-watching a TV show

    Eating fast food vs healthy food

    Leaving your phone in your bedroom vs keeping it in personal all the time

The point is: these pivotal moments can act as anchors that will either catapult your day to success, or put you on a downward spiral of lazy mindless activities.

By being intentional about these anchor moments, mindfully deciding what to do next, and working in focus blocks to differentiate between the different priorities of work, I plan on having a mindful, intentional and productive day.

Timeline — A Day in the Life

For a practicing Muslim such as myself, there’s nothing better than my daily prayers that can act as good anchor moments throughout the day.

As Muslims, we are asked to pray 5 times a day during designated times from sunrise to after sunset.

Not only do prayers act as anchor moments, they are also great times for reflections, being grateful, and getting a broader perspective. It can almost recharge the rest of your day, when done with intention.

Early Morning — 6AM to 9AM

    Start the day with morning prayer (or Fajr)

    Spend 30-45 minutes reading a book

    Go out for a walk or to the mosque for some reflection

    90-minutes of deep work towards programming, writing or creating content

Morning — 9AM to 1PM

    Start work day as an engineering manager at Yelp

    Front load all team and other stakeholder meetings

    Spend 30-45 minutes on low focus Yelp work

Noon — 1PM to 2PM

    Pray Duhr prayer

    Go to the gym

Early Afternoon — 2PM to 4PM

    Take more Yelp meetings

    Do some higher-level planning deep work (when no meetings)

Late Afternoon — 4PM to 6PM

    No meetings, only focus Yelp work

    Spend high quality focus time on impactful priority Yelp work

    Pray Asr prayer

Evening — 6PM onwards

    Cooking or eating healthy

    Spending time with friends and family

    Pray Maghrib prayer

Night — 10PM onwards

    Turn all the screens off

    Pray Isha prayer

    Start sleep preparations

Closing Thoughts

Okay folks, that’s all for today.

If you have read it so far, thank you for your time. I hope you found it valuable.

If you want to stay connected, here are a few ways you can do so: follow me on Medium or subscribe to my website.

Irtiza Hafiz

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