Ask HN: What's your working day like?
Profession: Web and Graphic Designer (aka UX Designer), part-time, remote and onsite at &lt;20 employee group in 3000&gt; employee organization.<p>### Morning ###<p>Wake up with feline alarm clock and his sister, both of whom are fed, given fresh water, spoken to and pet.<p>Light breakfast, usually yogurt and cereal or freshly-ground peanut butter on toast, and fruit. Stove-top coffee, black, no milk, no sugar, and accompanying glass of water. Meditate a little, not following any mantra, just trying to observe my thoughts with no judgment. Avoid looking at any screens, except to answer the usual call from my mother who lives overseas.<p>Depending on what day it is, either: ¶ Go out for long walks and photograph mostly people on the street; ¶ Go to office in part-time job, talk to people in person, draw and align things on paper and on the screen, print things and stick them on the wall and put them on a table where everyone can see them and often let them ‘sit’ for a day or five and live with them; ¶ Stay home and go out to buy fresh bread for breakfast. Look at paper planner to find out what I forgot I need to do and remember the context I am doing them in — Examples: update the color or redraw a line on a vector illustration, redraw and rescan a drawing, find a more appropriate typeface, change the wording in an InDesign or GitHub document, update the Google App Engine SSL certificate for a website, update or enhance a Wordpress or Django or Hugo website, make an HTML element display elegantly on a small and large screen, figure out a progressive enhancement with JavaScript while making sure it fails gracefully, find or craft a regular expression that matches a piece of text so I can search and replace it. Most of these involves looking up and also writing documentation to refresh my memory. ¶ I draw, align or write or choose things, around half the time for projects for other people and half the time for my own. Two current projects are a website about visual beauty and a book of black and white photographs.<p>Eat lunch often but not always consisting of heated leftovers from the previous evening’s dinner which was purposefully cooked in abundance so there is also lunch the following or following-following day. A particularly tasty leftover food is black or brown beans and white or brown rice and a spicy sautéed vegetable. If it is not raining or cold I like to eat sitting on grass outside. Should weather and temperature be grim I stay in and read things on a few websites while noting down ideas for projects and blog posts on a paper notebook, which is something I tend to do throughout the day.<p>### Afternoon ###<p>Coffee after lunch, and sometimes a sweet, at least 70% cocoa if chocolate.<p>Check email and reply. If there is an email asking me to do something which I cannot do at the current time I either write down what I need to do and when I need to get it done by on my paper planner or I archive the email.<p>Mid-to-late afternoon I usually draw and look at things on a large computer screen and draft an email showing progress, often with screenshots and brief captions with questions. I make sure to go outside before the sky is dark and walk home looking at and taking pictures of things. I may also walk to a bar and have a beer or play basketball or tennis or throw a frisbee or go to an event with a friend (when I do not get to do exercise outside due to, for example, soul-threatening weather or laziness, I often do the ‘7-minute Scientific Exercise’ routine in the living room before dinner). When I get home I look at, choose and sometimes publish a picture to my website and auto-post a link to it on social media websites that I rarely log into (this is called POSSE — [Publish on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere](<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;indieweb.org&#x2F;POSSE)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;indieweb.org&#x2F;POSSE)</a>). If I am home and it is cleaning day I take turns vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom, taking clothes to the washer in the building basement and setting up a line and hanging them in the living room, which makes it look Neapolitan and reminds me of the great food and people of Naples and of Pink Floyd’s [Live at Pompeii](<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pink_Floyd:_Live_at_Pompeii" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pink_Floyd:_Live_at_Pompeii</a>).<p>After dinner (which I take turns cooking or washing up after) and conversation I explore an open-world computer game with emergent gameplay mechanics or read a carefully-chosen book (I am lucky to have a partner who loves reading and writing). I also play with the felines, and talk to them and play music on the stereo for them — they particularly enjoy Kenny Burrell and Mozart — when I stay home during the day.