What's your average day like?

[kbalch]

Our community is made up of folks from all different walks of life and from all over the world. We all love homemade tools, though, and I thought it would be interesting to learn some more about our fellow members. So…

What's your average day like?

[Christophe Mineau]

Doing hundreds of things at the same time, with somewhere in the middle growing three teenagers, a wonderful wife , working for a living in telecom industry, some sports (running and MTB), and with the very very few time left, I have a workshop !
pfff, life is so hard ...

[kbalch]

OK, I'll jump in here, too.

I'm fortunate to work from home, so, while I spend a great deal of time online, I'm also able to multi-task around the house. A typical day, in addition to the computer work, generally includes: puttering around the house (honey-dos), working in the garage (building a kit car at the moment), and practicing my short game (golf) in the backyard.

Ken

[Hotz]

I also work at home, repairing the cylinder head.
three sons and one grandchild.
I like racing cars, driving my motorcycle , now 48 years old but with the mind of a boy of 16 years old, I think that's good.
The body may grow old, but mind (spirit) not.

Some dreams:
Assemble a racing car for my 9 year old son for 1/4 mile. (when he grows a little more)
Go to North America to view a salt lake race.
Driving a Harley Davidson in Dragon Road and Route 66 ..

Dream is good for the soul.

Paul ...

[Jon]

My day is basically split between internet work, smaller honey-dos around the house, large house projects (I try to take on only 1 large house project at a time), and reading. The next day usually gets laid out the night before, so I wake up and I have a list of next actions in my productivity software. Here's a normal day:

1. Coffee and breakfast while doing daily internet checks. I used to waste a lot of time on this; now I have a list of "daily checks" that I run through in the morning - website stuff, blogs, subreddits, email, analytics, news, etc.

2. Read. I have a big "Read/Review" bookmarks folder, hard drive folder, and physical stack of books. I schedule in a 30-minute block of reading 5 days a week, but I usually go over that. If that gets low, I pick a few new books from my "books to read next" list.

3. Internet work. This is my non-reading internet work. Generally a mix of small internet tasks, plus slicing off a chunk of any large projects I need to do. For example, I'm working on a large category audit of the encyclopedia now, so I've been trying to review 500 listings per day, create new categories, re-categorize, etc.

4. Outside time. Either I'll walk around the property with my dog and/or my son, or I'll putter around on miscellaneous small outdoor tasks that need to be accomplished. This is usually the highlight of my day. In warm weather, this is mostly logging and fire mitigation work on the property.

5. More internet work, per #3.

6. After dinner, I like to work on the one large house project I have on my plate. In the past few months it's been building a hearth for the woodstove. We moved into a new house this past year, and the garage/shop is a mess, but has huge potential. The hearth is done, so now my focus is shifting to creating my perfect shop. This sounds fun, but so far it's been mostly sorting through junk, mouseproofing, and patching drywall.

7. Prep the newsletter for the next day, and tighten up any remaining small internet tasks.

8. Usually that fills the entire day. Once in a while I'll have an extra hour or two at the end of the day to just relax, chat with the wife, drink a beer, etc.

9. Preview tasks for the following day.

That's a standard schedule for six days a week. The one remaining day we'll usually do a family activity.

[Ruwak]

Since I live 12 time zones away from my clients, my day starts at 10pm. I check email, figure out what needs to be done on the web work, try to get some of it done, then take a nap at 4am.

At 6 am, take 2 kids to school, then return home, eat some breakfast, then take a third kid to school. I try to slip on over to the local McDonalds and have a cup of coffee and shoot the s**t with my fellow expats for a bit, then it is time to get whatever supplies we need for the carpenters or fabricator depending on our project at the farm. I then come home and check the end of business emaiks from the states and do more web work before lunch.

After lunch, I try to take another nap, but that hardly ever happens because I have too much going on. A lot of times, I have to pull up a chair and supervise a project, give pointers etc. I find I take powernaps in the chair at this point, sleeping through hammering, cutting and grinding. I wear sunglasses so they do not know if I am sleeping or watching! I might 2 hours of sleep in picking up 2 kids from school at 5pm. After dinner, I help get the kids to bed and snooze until 10pm and start over.

I also try to find time to do product demos, meet with contractors, play with my kids, spend some quality time with my wife, who is also very busy doing somethiing.

It is almost 6am now, no school today due to Chinese New Year. Thecwife is dead tired, so zi will go to the farm and water 500 tomato plants. I have been putting that off, hoping there is rain to do thst for me, but so far the clouds are not helping me.

[Christophe Mineau]

I though I had a busy day ... but reading Jon, and then Ruwak, I think I should be able to do yet a little more
Great thread Ken !

[jere]

OK, I'll jump in here, too.

I'm fortunate to work from home, so, while I spend a great deal of time online, I'm also able to multi-task around the house. A typical day, in addition to the computer work, generally includes: puttering around the house (honey-dos), working in the garage (building a kit car at the moment), and practicing my short game (golf) in the backyard.

Ken

What kind of kit car? I have been scrounging up tools for a while now to eventually try a midlana.

[kbalch]

What kind of kit car? I have been scrounging up tools for a while now to eventually try a midlana.

I'm building an Ultima GTR. It'll be street legal, but a serious track day weapon. I'm also looking forward to Texas Mile -type events. The car is geared for 230+ MPH and the 700+ HP LS7 should be up to the challenge.

My project site is here: Ultima-Builders.com

The Midlana looks like a neat adaptation of the classic Lotus 7. I know guys with Caterhams, of course, and a couple with originals, but have never seen the Midlana. Should be a cool project.

Ken

[jere]

I'm building an Ultima GTR. It'll be street legal, but a serious track day weapon. I'm also looking forward to Texas Mile -type events. The car is geared for 230+ MPH and the 700+ HP LS7 should be up to the challenge.

My project site is here: Ultima-Builders.com

The Midlana looks like a neat adaptation of the classic Lotus 7. I know guys with Caterhams, of course, and a couple with originals, but have never seen the Midlana. Should be a cool project.

Ken

Wow that ultima looks like it should be a monster when its done! I will be following that site too thanks for the link.