Muthia Bianda

7.30 AM – Wakeup and Getting Ready

Let me get this straight out in the beginning: I’m not a morning person. It’s especially hard to let go of my heavy warm blanket in winter because it’s awfully cold and dark – the sun rises at 8. But I have to get up at this hour because I need to prepare my daughter to go to her KiTa (Kindertagesstätte) or daycare – which consist of watching Paw Patrol or Bluey while having breakfast.

My husband drops her at the KiTa (which is only 100 meters-ish from our apartment). And after they go, I get ready.

My ✨morning routine ✨consist of planning for the day, making coffee and breakfast. In my pink notebook 💅🏻 , I write gratitudes and my to-do list for the day. I usually already have the agenda for the week (appointments, meeting friends, etc) and targets (how many times I want to go the gym, what I want to learn, read, etc). It’s helpful for me to plan ahead what I want to do and on which day, because otherwise I want to do it all at once on Monday *dead*.

I do house chores in this time of day as well. And then fix myself a little bit so that I don’t look like a complete mess in Zoom calls.

9.00 AM – Early Work

At this hour, it’s when I feel like the world starts moving. Slack notifications start chiming, DBT alerts start bugging, messages from colleagues start coming – yup the day has officially began.

So at this time of day I usually catching up with work that I haven’t finished the day before and reaching out to people that I have to reach out.

I work on big company’s initiatives or our team’s initiatives. I talk with different stakeholders, designing data solutions for the business, actually building the data models, and sometimes making dashboards on Tableau as well.

When I am on support, I make sure everything’s fine. Fixing data quality issues in some places, fix and rerun a DAG if today’s run failed, answering data questions, so on and so forth.

So everyday is different. Some days I’m packed with meetings, some days I’m left alone and finally able to work on something that requires deep focus. But I like it, for me it’s exciting.

11.00 AM – Daily stand-up

At 11 AM, I join the daily stand-up with my team. 11 AM might be a little late for a stand-up, but it’s the perfect time for us because at this hour everyone from other timezone can join.

It’s a quick 15-minutes stand-up. Just to share a short update, blockers if any, but actually the main goal is to just say “hi” or “good morning” to your colleagues – showing that you’re present for the day, “I’m here!”.

Fun fact, our team tried to reduce stand-ups to 3 times a week, but turns out we miss each other too much in those days without stand-ups lol.

12.00 AM – Lunch (sometimes + Gym)

Time to make lunch and eat. Without my little one at home, I usually cook something simple, like sandwich or nasi goreng, yum! Sometimes I just skip it if I have a big breakfast.

I go to the gym at this hour too, 2 times a week (1 more session on the weekend). A perfect time for me to get some fresh air and see the outside world – get out from my sort of a cave called bedroom. I pack my gym bag, change to my gym attire, and walk to the gym. It’s not far from my apartment and I walk across a beautiful park every time – which is nice.

I spend 30-40 minutes at the gym, buy some small groceries on the way, and walk back home. At home I quickly shower, and ready to work again.

1 to 3 PM – Meetings

Meetings with stakeholders happen at this hour. Realign, clarify, share progress, repeat.

I also have internal meetings with data team at these hours too, like Retro, Planning, 121 with my manager, or with my mentor, although these meetings happens only once per two weeks. But they add up, you know?!

3 to 5 PM – Work

Back to real work which means I spend time with DBT, SQL, or Tableau again. Sometimes I have late meetings if my stakeholders live in the US timezones.

5 to 9 PM – Dinner and Family time

My daughter arrives home from KiTa at 4PM and after I finish work we cook dinner together. She’s still 3, but she’s quite helpful in the kitchen, well sometimes.

At 6 we have dinner, finish at 7, and after that is the bed time routine. Give my daughter a nice warm bath, change her to pyjamas, play a little, then put her to sleep.

9 to 12 PM – Classes, Reading books, Writing, Movies

Evening time is like my free time. I join some online courses – at this time of writing I’m like enrolled to 3 lol – mostly those are live sessions and if I can’t join, I watch the recordings. I have home works from those classes but I usually do it on the weekends, just a few hours before the deadline 😉

I write at this time of day – albeit rarely, like when I write this post. Most of the time, I read.

I catch up with my anime series, hehe. I’m not a series watcher, one 23 minutes anime episode every now and then is just-enough for me. And of course, I catch up with the internet at these hours.

12 PM – Finally snooze

Man, the lack of consistency of these gifs’ size is pissing me off!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy whatever this is. I had fun writing it – or maybe it’s my way to procrastinate before watching my course’s recording. See you next time!