Most of my journal is about how I design. This one is about when and where it happens, because people ask, and because how you set up your day shapes the work more than you might think.
I work from my home office. The wax melts go on and there’s an iced coffee within reach. My go-to is a mocha frappe from Starbucks.
The switch
My day starts with the school and nursery run. Once the kids are dropped off, I come home and switch modes completely. Mum has clocked off for the next six hours. What’s left is user interfaces, design problems, Claude open in one window, Figma in the other, and a list of tickets to work through.
That clear switch matters. Working from home only works for me if there’s a real line between the two parts of the day, and the school run draws it for me.
- School run Kids dropped at school and nursery.
- Work mode Figma, Claude and the ticket list.
- Lunch workout A home gym session to reset my focus.
- Afternoon push Solve, ship, sign off.
What’s on in the background
Music helps me focus. It’s usually Taylor Swift or country music.
At lunch I stop for a session in my home gym. It sounds like time away from the work, but it’s the opposite. It keeps my focus going for the rest of the day.
A good day is one where something moved forward.
What a good day looks like
For me, a good day isn’t about how many hours I put in. It’s whether we solved a problem, pushed code, or got a new design signed off. Something shipped, something unblocked, something decided. Progress you can point to.
That’s the same way I think about design generally. The measure isn’t how polished the screens look. It’s whether things are better than they were in the morning.
When the kids are home
Some days the work runs past pick-up. That takes a bit of planning.
Like most good design, it’s a system: set things up well beforehand and the day runs itself.