My Sunday Routine

Back when I thought I wanted to be a sysadmin, I read Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas A. Limoncelli. The sections that appealed to me the most were about routines. The routine of his that I always remember is that he gasses up his car on Sundays. Despite being a believer in the cashless society, the thing I always do now on Sundays is get cash. That way I don't have to think about it for another week.

My Sunday routine is a list of tasks, all requiring a low amount of brain power, all which can be done in a single evening. I use the process.st recurring checklist app to remind me what to do for my Sunday routine. I got the idea of having a written-out routine after reading the article Atul Gawande wrote about checklists. (He would turn that article into a book, which I would later read.) On my "Sunday Routine" checklist are things like "take out the recycling and the trash"; "water the plants"; "download and queue up podcasts"; "charge all the things"; "fill the kettle and make some fizzy water with the SodaStream"; and other mundane but necessary things that I'd rather not do on workdays.

My hope for my Sunday routine was that it would offload some mental energy to a written list. I would say that has happened, but I can't say for sure that it has added to the amount of energy I have for the rest of the week. At least everything that needs to get done gets done. I've added other checklists to my life, including a "Leaving Home Checklist" (so I don't forget my resuseable coffee cup and turn off the lights) and a Start Work Checklist (for all of the systems I have to log into before starting my pager duty shifts in the mornings). That has led to less forgetting to do the important but brainless things I have to do every day so I don't think of it a block away from my apartment or the easy things are out of the way when getting to work.