The honest problem
My day job is 10 to 7. Add Dhaka traffic, and "7" becomes "whenever the traffic decides". On top of that I teach web development, I'm doing an MSc, and I'd like to occasionally remember what my family looks like.
For a long time my plan was: "I'll go to the gym, study, write code and read every evening." My actual result was: lie on the bed, open the phone "for five minutes", and look up when it's midnight.
The problem wasn't laziness. It was too many goals fighting over the same tired hour.
Rule 1: Protect two blocks, not ten
I stopped trying to win every category. Each weekday I protect exactly two things:
- Training in the morning, before work steals my energy.
- One learning block in the evening, about an hour.
Everything else (reading, gaming, side projects) is a bonus, not a requirement. If a bonus doesn't happen, the day is still a win. This one mindset change killed most of my guilt, and guilt was eating more time than anything else.
Rule 2: Gym before work, not after
After 7 PM my willpower is a phone at 3% battery. So the gym goes first, before the day gets a vote.
- The gym is the only place where I lift more than Jira tickets.
- It's not about long sessions. A focused workout beats a long one spent mostly on my phone between sets.
- The surprise benefit: I'm sharper at work. Morning exercise is basically a productivity hack disguised as suffering.
Rule 3: Commute is a classroom
Dhaka traffic gives you a lot of time to think about your life choices. I turned it into learning time: podcasts, conference talks with the video off, audiobooks. Not deep study, just exposure to ideas. Two hours of traffic a day adds up to a whole extra workday every week. Might as well get something out of it.
Rule 4: The learning block has a tiny scope
My evening hour fails when the goal is vague, like "learn system design". It works when the goal is tiny and concrete:
- "Read one chapter and write 5 bullet notes."
- "Build the smallest possible example of a Go worker pool."
- "Finish one lesson of the course I'm doing." (That's how my recent Anthropic certificates happened, one evening at a time.)
Small scope means I can start even when I'm tired. Starting is the whole battle. Once I'm 10 minutes in, I usually keep going.
Many of the posts on this blog come from these hours: I learn something, then try to explain it simply. Teaching is the best test of whether I actually understood it.
Rule 5: Weekends have a theme
Weekdays are for maintenance. Weekends are for the bigger things: teaching my students, MSc work, longer side projects, and cooking something nicer than whatever was fastest on Tuesday.
Rule 6: Rest is part of the plan
I used to treat rest as "time I failed to be productive". Now it's scheduled on purpose:
- Gardening is my screen-free reset. Plants don't care about your deadlines, which is very relaxing.
- PlayStation is allowed, with a rule: one match, not "one more match" fifteen times.
- Sleep is non-negotiable. Every plan above collapses if I sleep 5 hours. The gym needs it, the brain needs it, and my students definitely need me awake.
What didn't work (so you can skip it)
- 5 AM routines copied from YouTube. I'm not that person, and pretending made me miserable by Wednesday.
- Tracking ten habits in an app. I spent more time ticking boxes than doing the habits.
- "I'll catch up on the weekend." The weekend has its own plans. It never catches up.
I'm not perfect at this. Some weeks the job wins, some weeks the traffic wins. But a boring routine that survives bad weeks beats a perfect plan that only works on good ones.