I’m writing this one on the airplane, too. Not quite my typical day today! And I’m posting it on American Thanksgiving—my first time celebrating it—also not my typical day! For those who are celebrating, I hope you’re having a great time.

Martin asked a three part question, and I answered two parts of it earlier, and here’s the third:

What is your typical day like?

I try to maintain a “normal” office schedule as much as possible. Since we have people scattered all throughout the time zones, there are certain times of day that are the best for all of us to get together for meetings and the like, and if I’m asleep during those times, things tend to suck. And, honestly, while I love working until 5AM, until I can’t see the screen clearly and I pass out as soon as I lie down, I know that overall, I get more good work finished if I stick to a relatively normal schedule.

So: I’m up between 7AM and 10AM. I try for 8-ish. I’ll do a quick check of email, IMs, and Basecamp from bed, checking to make sure there are no fires that need to be put out, no calls that need to be quickly returned to printers, etc. Most of the world doesn’t telephone me, and that suits me fine.

Once I’m sure that the world won’t end, I cart the laptop over to my desk, and go make tea [if it's 9AM or earlier] or coffee [if it's after 9]. Sometimes I get ambitious and make breakfast, but that’s usually only if I’m starving. Most of the time, lunch is my first meal of the day.

Over my morning drink, I’ll catch up on email, reply to Basecamp messages, read the usual message boards and mailing lists, read the news and my RSS feeds. If there’s a book going to print that day, I try to finish that before lunch—the printer we use in Canada is a couple time zones ahead of me, so if I wait until my afternoon I may end up missing their working hours—but otherwise, my mornings are usually full up with correspondence. I forward interesting news article, both real world and game industry, to a specific forum in our Basecamp so others can keep up with the news easily.

Once that’s done, I head into whatever is the major work of the day, whether that be laying out a new book, putting corrections into a draft, working on a page design, building advertisements, etc. I break for lunch when I get hungry, usually around 1PM or so. I often eat lunch at my desk, but I’ve been trying to break that habit of late, and instead I try and read while eating. Sometimes I escape the house for lunch, especially if I have mundane chores to run that day. There’s a wacky Mexican/Canadian place just down the street from my bank that I typically visit, and I’ll down sugary coffee, usually with my notepad, jotting ideas and brainstorming. I find that since I work from home, leaving the office is a great way to change my mood and spur productivity. Get a change of venue and start work on a new or stalled project, and things tend to flow. I’m not one of those “muse” people. I have to get a certain amount of work finished, every day, and so I have to make sure that if something isn’t working right, I get it fixed or find something else appropriate to work on.

Shortly after lunchtime [in my time zone, at least] is typically when our meetings are scheduled, if we have any that day. I try to keep our meetings non-stupid: there’s a meeting for each game line each week, and only the people that need to be there show up. If you’re developing Classic BattleTech books, you don’t come to the Shadowrun meeting; that’s a waste of everyone’s time.

After the meeting, or if there’s no meeting, I spend the afternoon doing more of the major work for the day. I want to spend the bulk of my afternoons doing this: I can put a good dent into most tasks if I get 3 uninterrupted hours on it.

From 6PM to 9PM I have mandated “quiet time,” where I might be working or I might be not, but during which I ask that co-workers, freelancers, and other work-related people leave me alone—either so I can get work finished, or so I can chill out and watch TV/read/socialize without distraction. This doesn’t always work out. Sometimes we have to schedule a meeting in the evening, or sometimes we end up gabbing about things anyway.

If I worked in the early evening, I normally take the late evening off. If I took the early evening off, I normally work late. Working late often includes catching up with David, talking business stuff and making sure he’s up to date on the schedule and gets verbal summaries of the meetings.

Throughout the day I’ll also keep an eye out on “core” forums, mailing lists, etc. My twitter feed is a constant buzz of my friends and colleagues, and my IM client is rarely idle for long. A large part of my job is communications, and so I have to be around to help out our freelancers and staff … or just to antagonize Herb.

That’s pretty much the typical day: sometimes I start later, sometimes I start earlier, but the routine is more-or-less the same, regardless.

This entry was posted by AdamJury, on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 10:44:25 and is filed under General.