A Day In Firdaus’ Life
Learning software engineering is easy.
That 👆 is one saying that will forever be told in negation. So how do people make it through? I think time is one of the most important factors here.
“Firdaus, how do you manage your time?, How do you manage to get so much done?” Is it true that you’ve read 58 books this far in 2021, how did you do it?
Many people have asked me 👆, I want to answer in this article.
I go by the name Firdaus, 21 years, born and raised in Kenya. I’ve been studying software engineering for about 2 years right now (save the details for a later article). Currently, I am a software engineering student at alx (a software engineering camp that I’m part of).
Friends from the alx have asked me so much about myself and how I get my stuff done, especially after Mr Fred Swaniker wrote this article about our conversation. Pambah went ahead to make a formal request. He (among others) was my inspiration for this post.
I’m going to give you a breakdown of what my typical day looks like, how I get stuff done, and the learning techniques that make my learning effectively productive.
Before we proceed, it is very important to note that the techniques I use may not work for you. I do not guarantee that everything I do is effective to anyone or is healthy for practice. It’s not all the time that this works for me, sometimes I feel bored and need to relax for a while, sometimes I feel lazy… As you read, take out what you think may work for you to make you a more productive doer. You may want to practice the techniques to find out what will work for you, and what will not.
Day Overview
This part covers the small time divisions of my day and how I manage them.
5 am | Wake-up
I think I’m one of the laziest heavy sleepers on earth. I set two alarms and a talking clock to bark at me in the morning. After stretching out, I go brush, take a cold shower and meditate to start my day.
Meditation is a very important aspect of my day. I learnt that from The 5 AM Club — by Robin Sharma. Check the article summary of the book here
I pray the morning prayer (salat Fajr) and recite Quran till 6.
6 am | Cleaning time
For a person who spends the whole time between a table and a chair (like me), cleaning can be the simplest task that is so easy to think of but so hard to do. To avoid this I have a scheduled time in my daily routine to clean my room and organize my stuff very well (they will probably be very messy in the evening anyway).
I also do laundry at this time then wipe my desk clean.
7 am | Journalling + Planning
My diary is my best friend. I talk to it every day and update it with everything I feel is necessary. Journalling has helped me to improve my emotional and mental health. It’s something that I’ve been doing for years. I appreciate the self-reflection and alone-time that it gives me.
At this hour, I reflect on my day and organize the stuff I need to accomplish. Normally, I set my weekly goals on Sunday evening. So at this time I just drag and drop them into my day’s template.
I intentionally plan my daily highlight, which is the most important task that I should accomplish before the day ends. I learnt this amazing concept, and more from the book Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day — by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky
I trained myself to follow a specific routine every day until I got it embedded in my muscle memory. I can move from one activity to another without much thinking, kind of like automating my workflow by being habitual. I method I learnt from the book Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones — by James Clear
The picture below shows my fixed-time template from Google Calendar that I update every day with the specific tasks of the day.
8am — 12:45pm | Pom time
Now that I have a clear plan for my day, it is easy for me to get my tasks done.
My tasks include:
- virtual school classes (I’m a student of Computing and Information Systems)
- alx projects (read →writeCode →checkCode)
- side hustles (some cash is necessary)
- writing goals (keeping the writer in me alive)
I use the Pomodoro technique (pom for short) throughout the day. That is 45 minutes to do a task followed by 15 minutes break. I do a task at a time, with the utmost focus that I can attain at that moment.
I try to plan similar consecutive tasks to follow one another so that it is easy to shift from a pom to the next. I try to maintain deep in my poms, a technique I learnt from Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World — by Cal Newport
I get to have 7 productive poms before lunch hour. The short breaks between the poms reenergize me for the next sitting.
12:45pm — 2pm | Lunch break
At this hour, I am so tired and need a mental recharge and fooooood.
My mom prepares lunch for us at home. We eat together with dad and my sister. After that, I go to have my afternoon prayer (salat Dhuhr) then relax by taking a nap or by having my solo time where I sit away from electronics, books and any physical destruction. I try to internalize and think over what I have learned in the morning.
While resting, I may realize a solution/mistake to something that I did in the morning. I will take this time to go and fix it, then continue my solo time. I treat my solo time the way I treat my meditation time.
2 pm — 4 pm | Afternoon poms
After a long resting session, I get back with more energy for the afternoon. I continue to have 2 more poms with a short break between them just like I had in the morning.
4pm to 4:15pm | Github update and #100DaysOfCode tweet
I joined the #100DaysOfCode challenge on 2nd August 2021. One of the conditions for the challenge is to tweet your progress every day and update your Github log, I do that at this time. As I am writing this article, today is my 99th day of the challenge.
It’s been an awesome learning journey for me. Article on my #100DaysOfCode lessons and achievements coming up soon, follow my medium account to be updated anytime I post a new article.
4:15pm — 7pm | Open time
After evening prayers (salat Asr), I get to enjoy my open time. By that I mean I can go out of the house, visit friends, have fun. I’m also open to virtual invitations from friends (mostly study group video calls).
When I am not satisfied with my day’s achievements, I extend my poms during this time as well.
I also get invitations to talk to teams and groups. My talk about mentorship, time management, effective reading/writing techniques, software engineering…etc. You can register in my linktree using the last tab Chat with Me
PS: I only accept selected invitations depending on your responses to the registration questions.
7:15pm — 8pm | Last pom
After the evening prayer (salat maghrib), I have this as my last pom of the day. I conclude all my pending tasks and close my laptop at 8 pm.
8 pm — 9:45 pm | Beta is Booktifully Beautiful
After the night prayer (salat isha), I have my favourite time of the day. I use the eReaderPrestigio mobile app to read books and listen to them when my eyes get pain from peeping into my tiny phone’s screen. Here’s an article I wrote about how I use the app.
I use the text-to-speech feature of the eReaderPrestigio app whenever my eyes get tired of staring at the screen for so long (mostly at night) and at such a time headphones come in very handy.
Alexa text-to-speech output is the famous (and free) engine that most readers use with this app. Listening to Alexa was kind of awkward at first. This robot just recites plainly without any emotions, unlike human-recited audiobooks. But as time went by, this engine (especially the voice of the female) became my favourite one. This sharpened my listening speed ( up to 2x) and I even learned correct English pronunciation from it.
I get to read without disturbance for so long. Mom will call me for supper sometime at 8 and I will eat with my headphones (not wanting to pause my reading time).
9:45pm | Day’s reflection + Jounaling
I refer to my diary to see if I have achieved what I set out to do in the morning. If yes, I award myself by scheduling my next read to be my favourite book from my to-be-read shelf. If not, I reschedule the task to the next possible day and redo it.
I also reflect on my day and journal my experience. Sometimes, when I am too bothered, I will meditate before going to bed. When I feel strong, I just journal and go to bed.
10 pm | Goodnight
I go to bed at 10. When I go to bed late, I wake up grumpier and will be tired earlier. When I go to bed at 10, I wake up fresh and strong to face my day.
To make sure that I get the best quality of sleep I can afford, I set some rules for myself:
- Go to bed by 10:05 pm (I set an alarm to remind me)
- My phone should be 2 meters away from my bed at night
- My phone should be on Airplane mode at night
- Count from 100 going backwards if I fail to sleep 10+ minutes after going to bed.
Those are funny rules up there, I try my best to follow them, although sometimes I fail.
How I maintain focus and concentration while studying
Studying is a task that I take seriously. I treat my working time with the same amount of focus and attention. Here are some of the techniques I use to make my time productive
1. Be in a silent place
I can be easily distracted by anything, being in my silent bubble enhances my concentration. This is my time of intense focus.
2. No interruption
I reduce the volume of my phone notifications, I silence my slack desktop alerts and anything that may bring audible inconveniences.
3. Plan my study session
I break down a Pomodoro into bits of tasks that I can achieve in the set 45 minutes. That helps me define my journey path for the session.
4. Make the breaks effective
Shifting my concentration off the computer screen during the short breaks between poms help me to divert attention from studying and relax my brain muscles for a short while. This also helps me to process concepts dynamically, a technique I learnt from the book Learning How to Learn — by Barbara Oakley
Here are some of the things I do during my short breaks:
- Exercise, stretch and jump around
- Bask in the morning sun
- Eat & hydrate
- Listen to Google podcasts
- Continue to read my favourite book (from the currently-reading shelf)
- Watch youtube videos: My favourite channels are Ali Abdaal and The Diary Of A CEO
- Watch TikTok videos: My fav accounts are@dermdoctor and @shiksha.arora
- Check #techtwitter for any trending news, motivate other people taking the #100DaysOfCode challenge
5. Reflection
After reading concepts, I take time to reflect on them passively (what I do during lunch breaks), which makes the process of retrieving concepts from your memory easier.
6. Action
My mentor — Maarten van Middelaar — taught me that learning is a bi-process activity, i.e reading and implementing. The reading part is easier for many, but mostly those who implement a concept they read to get to understand it better.
I try to implement what I have read by having as much hands-on experience as possible. This rule implies everything that I read every day about programming.
Reminder: I do not guarantee that the techniques I have shared will work for you; try and let me know the outcome in the comments. This has been my default schedule for the better part of this year. Of course, I have moody days and times when this schedule doesn’t work. I am currently more of a learner and I’m certain things will change with time.
All the books mentioned in this article can be freely downloaded from the embed links. They are awesome and very worth your time to read them.
If you have read up to this far, I am certain you have learnt a thing or two that you can put to practice. If you have a suggestion on how I can improve, I’ll appreciate it if you will let me know.
Connect with me here.
UPDATE:
- All my upcoming technical articles will be in my Hashnode blog
- This medium account will only contain non-technical posts
