I write about other people's routines for a living, which makes it fair to publish my own. This is what an ordinary Tuesday actually looks like, including the parts that are unglamorous and the parts I have changed my mind about.
The short version: I wake early without an alarm, train in an EMS suit three mornings a week, eat keto, and protect the first half of the day for deep work. Everything else is arranged around keeping those four things easy to do.
6:30am, and no alarm
I wake up at about 6:30 without an alarm. That took months of consistent sleep and wake times to arrive at, and it is the single change that improved everything downstream. An alarm pulls you out of whatever sleep stage you happen to be in. Waking naturally means the day starts without that jolt.
Then the 1-2-3 rule, which is the only productivity trick I have kept. One big thing, two medium things, three small things. That is the whole day's list. If the one big thing gets done, the day worked, regardless of what happened to the rest. It stops me from confusing a busy day with a productive one.
Cold shower, then the suit
Cold shower first. Not a long one, and not for any mystical reason. It ends the grogginess argument immediately.
On Monday, Wednesday and Friday I put the EMS suit on straight out of the shower. This is deliberate and it is the most useful thing I have learned about training in one: a slightly damp body improves the electrode connection. Dry electrodes work fine, but going straight from the shower gives noticeably better contact without spraying anything on first.
It is also an activation energy hack. The hardest part of any workout is the gap between deciding to train and starting. Putting the suit on before I am fully awake removes the gap entirely. I am already in it, so I may as well do the twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes in the suit is equivalent to a 3 to 4 hour gym workout. That is why it fits a morning: there is no version of my schedule where a three hour session happens before work, and there is every version where twenty minutes does.
Tuesday and Thursday are F45 instead. The suit is not a replacement for moving properly with other people in the room, and classes solve the accountability problem that training at home does not.
The coffee, which is not just coffee
I make one cup and put a lot in it: instant coffee as the base, MCT oil, collagen, lion's mane, cordyceps and maca. It sounds like a lot because it is. The logic is that I am going to drink a coffee anyway, so it may as well carry the things I would otherwise have to remember separately.
MCT for a fat source that suits keto, collagen because it is the easiest protein to add to a hot drink, and the mushrooms and maca because I noticed the difference on the mornings I skipped them and not much on the mornings I did not.
The morning stack
Taken with the coffee, not on an empty stomach: vitamin D at 5000iu, AG1, creatine, tongkat ali, TMG, biotin and NMN.
Creatine is the one I would defend hardest, because it has more evidence behind it than anything else on the list and it is inexpensive. Vitamin D because I am indoors working for most of the daylight hours despite living somewhere sunny, which is its own kind of joke. The rest I take because I have read enough to think the downside is low.
No breakfast
I eat keto and I do not eat breakfast. The first meal is lunch. This is not fasting as a discipline, it is that I am not hungry in the morning and eating early makes me slow for the exact hours I need to be sharp.
Reading, in actual sunlight
Twenty to thirty pages before work, outside, looking at the ocean. Morning light is the strongest signal your body clock gets, and getting it early is most of why the 6:30 wake holds without an alarm. Reading is the excuse that keeps me outside long enough for it to count.
Deep work until 2pm
This is the block everything else protects. No meetings before 2pm if I can help it, and the one big thing from the 1-2-3 list gets attacked first.
My desk is next to the pool, which sounds like a flex and is really a focus tool. When I get stuck, I get in the water for a few minutes. It breaks the loop far better than opening another tab does, and the friction is low enough that I actually do it rather than doom-scrolling instead.
Lunch, around 60g of protein
Three or four eggs, half an avocado, Carbonaut bread, and a protein source. That lands around 60 grams of protein in one meal, which matters more when you only eat twice a day. Keto makes this simple: there is a short list of things I eat and I am not deciding at noon.
The hour off, and the light
An hour's break after lunch. On alternate days this is when the iRestore cap goes on, and on the days between, the red light LED mask. Alternating means neither becomes a chore, and both are passive: I can read or answer messages while wearing them. A red light blanket is on its way, which will make this block the third light session rather than the second.
Sauna, swim, cold plunge
Late afternoon. Sauna, then a swim, then a cold plunge. The order matters more than the durations. Hot first opens everything up, the swim is movement without impact, and the plunge closes it out and resets my energy for the evening.
This is also the most social part of the day. I live in a house with five other entrepreneurs, and the sauna is where most of the useful conversations happen. Working from home is isolating by default and this is the structural fix, not a willpower one.
Dinner, and the airfryer system
Chicken thighs in the airfryer, most nights. Thighs rather than breast because they are harder to ruin and they suit a keto macro split better. It is a system, not a recipe: the same thing, cooked the same way, so dinner is never a decision.
Winding down
Magnesium and L-theanine at night. Magnesium for sleep quality, L-theanine because it takes the edge off without sedating.
Then an hour of television, which I am not going to pretend is optimised, and reading until I fall asleep. The reading is the actual sleep trigger. Screens off, page open, and that is the end of the day.
What I would tell you to copy
Not the whole thing. Three parts of it carry most of the weight.
Consistent sleep and wake times, so you can eventually drop the alarm. Morning sunlight, early and outside. And attaching the workout to something you already do without thinking, which for me is the shower, so that starting requires no decision.
The supplements, the light therapy and the cold plunge are the last ten percent. They are worth it once the first ninety is boring and automatic. They are not worth much before that.
Everything below is what I personally use. Some are affiliate links, which fund the site.