What managing priorities as an entrepreneur looks like

A Day in the Life of a Newsletter Operator

I write this newsletter on Wednesday, a whole week before it lands in your inbox. 

My calendar is always light on Wednesday, so there’s space for all the non-writing activities that are essential to good writing: space to think about the work, to try out ideas until one sticks, to grumble that it’s taking too long, to walk away and lay down for a while or get more beverages.

All of that takes at least 3 hours.  

Wednesday is the one day per week that I really have my priorities straight. My alarm goes off at 5:05am, I eat two soft-boiled eggs while drinking coffee and journaling, then I go to the gym for sixty minutes of circuit training with my canoe coach. 

At 7am I drive to my bestie’s house, where mint-licorice tea and blue cheese toast is always available. We have a good goss in her hot tub, eat breakfast, then I drive back home to start my work day at 9:30am. 

Sometimes I avoid this newsletter for a bit. It’s daunting, honestly. I didn’t start it today until 10:15am, once my inbox was cleaned out.* 

I spent 12 minutes trying to get on Kendrick Lamar’s email list.

I spent 34 minutes writing false starts.  

I opened LinkedIn 3x without meaning to, my brain just did it an act of resistance . 

Eventually, this email will be done and I’ll have something I’m proud of and can’t stop rereading.** I won’t get into the weeds on my writing process for newsletters. Creative work takes a lot of discipline. You need habits and routines for the days you don’t feel like it. 

This afternoon I’ll go to the dentist to pick up my long-term Invisalign retainer. I’m finally done after 4 hellacious years of unfucking my formerly crowded teeth. They look amazing, as you saw. 

After that I’ll meet with Sophia Apostol, who coaches me on facilitation. Together we design all the live sessions for Power, and today we’re designing the mastermind retreat in Lisbon at the end of the month. 

At 4:30pm I have band practice. Yes, really. I can’t officially tell you any more in case Kendrick finds out and is offended I didn’t approach him first. 

At some point I have to do dishes because my kitchen looks like the seventh circle of hell. I also have to make an extra hour of work appear out of nowhere because final sales page edits are due to our designer Amber Seacrest, who doesn’t work Friday.

Finally, today is my son Mo’s 7th birthday, so I’ll go to his dad’s house to snuggle that big overgrown baby and give him his birthday present, a green and blue North Face backpack I got on sale at MEC. If I’m lucky there’ll be food. My ex and I have a pretty healthy co-parenting relationship. I’m grateful and proud of us for coming this far, and proud of myself for choosing such a good dad for my boys. Hard to believe we were duking it out in mediation just a few years ago. 

I won’t eat cake because my ex doesn’t do refined sugar. 

I won’t drink alcohol because I had a cider on Sunday and I’m not sure what my alcohol policy is officially. Possibly zero. Possibly once a week. Still working out the details.

(So saintly )

My goal is lights out at 9:30pm every night. I got rid of the TV in my bedroom and listed my AppleTV on Marketplace. I haven’t stopped thinking about what Bryan Johnson (the Don’t Die guy) often says in his interviews, which is, “You need to think of sleep as if you are a professional sleeper.” I took that to heart, and my sleep has improved dramatically.*** 

This is supposed to be my Diary Of A CEO: Wednesday Edition, to show you how deftly I juggle priorities, so I feel bound to tell you I’ll be working Saturday. 

There are 6 other tasks assigned to me today, some of which will done get done. 

Usually I can knock off overdue tasks later in the week but it’s March break and I’m taking my son snowboarding. Priorities, right? Which means I’m working Saturday. 

That’s it. 

That’s a pretty typical Wednesday. 

Feel free to make some version of this your next email. 

This kind of newsletter always does well because humans are naturally curious. It’s fun to peek behind the curtain. Plus, painting a picture of your day is more memorable than creating some listicle about how you set priorities. 

I’d love to hear from you:

What’s one thing you’re prioritizing this week, in life or in business? 

Hit ‘reply’ and share.

XOT

Tarzan Kalryzian [she/they]
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*A cluttered inbox is an itch I have to scratch before anything else. People say starting the day with email is bad but it works for me. INBOX ZERO IS LIFE!

**Once the newsletter is handed off to be proofed and uploaded, I don’t make changes but I still reread it. Last week’s email about how to buy confidence was particularly great, IMO. Your replies were just icing on the cake. Special shoutout to the male subscribers who wrote to assure me they were not offended. 

*** There’s so many parts of this Bryan Johnson interview with The Free Press that I’m still thinking about after listening to it months ago.

****Just kidding! This email is over. Click this link to tell my email service provider you’re the kind of super reader who reads all the way to the bottom.