Every weekend, I call some two to four of my friends, relatives or ex-colleagues thanks to my Friends Roster project. And invariably at least one of them ask me what I do on a daily basis after retirement. They are curious as to how I spend my day. I have posted my daily routine more than two years ago including a complete time table. But I thought may be I should do a 2021 edition in case some things have changed since then. So here goes.


I don't know where my time goes. So to fix that I paused and watched how I spend my time the last 2 or 3 days. Most days are almost the same given that weekends and weekdays are exactly the same thanks to no school for my kid and me being retired. I will try to split the day into time slots so it is easier to understand where my time goes.


5:30 am to 10:00 am

I generally wake up some time between 5:30 and 6:00 am on most days. In fact, most days I wake up between 5:30 and 5:45. I don't know how my body knows to wake up exactly in that slice. It does not matter whether it is summer or winter, so I am assuming it does not depend on sunlight entering the room. The strange thing is that I wake around that time even when I sleep very late in the night. At most I will wake up by 6:30.


Anyway, from the time I wake up to 6:30, I finish the bathroom rituals along with catching up on emails. Around 6:30 I have a nice cup of coffee while chatting with my parents. That goes on till 7:00 when we all sit down to watch the morning news on TV till 7:30. From there I read other news (Google News, blogs that I follow etc), check on my projects and plan my day until about 8:30 am. I finish my breakfast and catch up on YouTube videos that I follow between 8:30 to 9:00 am.


By this time my daughter is up, so we spend some time together along with the whole family. Our daughter dictates the terms and we are just pawns in her activities. Her timeline starts at 9:00 and continues on. During this time she finishes her breakfast, sun time and outside play. I break off at around 10:00 am from her timeline.


10:00 am to 1:30 pm

From 10:00 to 11:30 am, I workout at my home gym, or attend karate class (currently online), or do some cleaning (mopping, cleaning windows, spiderwebs, staircase railings, laptop etc). Between 11:30 am and 12:30 pm, I am usually working on some project. You know what those projects are don't you? At any point of time, I have at least one hobby project that I will be actively working on. Some examples of long running projects that I completed in the past or are still running include --


Those were projects which I started after retirement and took more than 3 months each to complete. In addition, I also work on several smaller projects which I have not listed. The latest project I am working on is setting up solar panels. Will write a few posts on that soon.


Finally from 12:30 to 1:00 pm I have my lunch along with more YouTube and then some family time till 1:30 pm after which my parents go for their afternoon siesta.


1:30 pm to 4:00 pm

From 1:30 to 3:00 pm is mostly time with my daughter and family. We play games on tablet, do drawing or crafts, play board games, read books etc. Around 3:00 pm we have a quick family time as my parents sip on some tea and then more play time with the kid until around 4:00 pm.


4:00 pm to 7:00 pm

During this time, my kid has her snack and goes out to play. Although we are in COVID lock down, our layout has a lot of open spaces where my kid plays. Most kids are either indoors or play far away from each other. Between 4:00 to 7:00 pm, it is almost exclusively me time :).


I continue working on my hobby projects until about 5:00 or 5:30 pm. Then I have a snack while watching more YouTube. After that I go for watering plants and/or spray home made pesticide on bugs on our terrace garden. Finally I sit down for more hobby project work during weekdays. On weekends I call a couple of friends. By the end of this whole routine, it is already 7:00 pm!


7:00 pm to 9:30 pm

From 7:00 pm, I spend more time with my daughter while watching some movie or TV show along with family. Around 8:00 pm, I have my dinner. Then from 8:30 to 9:30 pm I finish up on any small tasks for the day like responding to emails, back up data (like git push), organize photos or music or documents, reading interesting blogs or reviews, ordering stuff, looking for good movies on amazon prime, investment planning etc. Then I retire to bed for the day at around 9:30 pm in the night.


Conclusion

I hope I have covered my day in the minutest detail and have given you more information than required :). Here is a summary of the day in case that wasn't enough.


05:30 - 06:30  Wake up, brush
06:30 - 07:30  Coffee, family time
07:30 - 08:30  Personal hygiene, read news

08:30 - 09:30  Breakfast, News, YouTube
09:30 - 10:00  Spend time with daughter
10:00 - 11:30  Gym / Karate / House maintenance

11:30 - 12:30  Hobby projects
11:30 - 12:30  Lunch, family time
13:30 - 16:00  Daughter, family time

16:00 - 17:30  Hobby projects
17:30 - 18:00  Snacks, gardening
18:00 - 19:00  Calling friends / hobby projects

19:00 - 20:30  Daughter, family time
20:30 - 21:30  Dinner, wrapping up
21:30 - 05:30  Sleep time!


It is interesting that my routine hasn't changed much since the 2019 edition of my daily routine! I still spend about 4 hours on my hobby projects, 6 hours with family, 2 hours working out and about 8 hours on sleep. The unaccounted 4 hours goes into random things like eating, personal hygiene, reading news, keeping in touch with friends, and other sundry items.