Working from home sounds like a dream until it isn’t. The flexibility is real, but so is the trap. Without structure, you don’t just procrastinate, you spiral. One postponed task becomes two, becomes a week, and suddenly you’re your own worst enemy, sitting in yesterday’s clothes, wondering where the day went.
I learned that lesson the hard way years ago, which is why I’ve kept a strict routine for as long as I can remember.
For a long time, that meant early mornings, 5 AM, Taipei time. Up before the city noise, coffee in hand, critical work done before lunch. I’m a morning person by design, not by nature.
I trained myself to be one because I noticed something simple: when I got my most important work done early, my afternoons and evenings actually felt like mine. That’s a rare feeling when you work for yourself.
But 2026 had other plans.
With bigger goals on the table. A language learning app, private equity moves, and a Zero to $1M challenge that’s very much in motion, my schedule started bending.
And then it broke entirely. For a while, I was essentially living European time while physically sitting in Taiwan. Waking up at 1 PM. Going to bed at 6 or 7 AM. It felt chaotic at first, like jet lag you chose voluntarily.
I was almost back to normal. Almost.
Then someone from London walked into my life and made my days considerably better. I told her I’d write about this today, so here we are. A promise kept.
Because of her, I decided to stay on UK time. It’s a choice I’m genuinely happy with.
The Actual Breakdown (Imagine You’re in the UK)
Fair warning: this is not glamorous. If you’re looking for a “5 AM cold plunge, journaling, gratitude, and green smoothie” morning routine, this isn’t that. This is what actually works for me. Efficient, low-drama, and built around the reality of running multiple projects from an iPad.
- 1:00 PM – Wake up. Coffee immediately. Sofa. The occasional text.
- 1:30 PM – Open Apple Notes on the iPad, build my checklist for the day. This is non-negotiable. If it’s not on the list, it doesn’t exist.
- 2:00 PM – Knock out the most critical administrative tasks while my brain is fresh and the coffee is still working.
- 3:00 PM – Breakfast. Proper food, not a protein bar grabbed between meetings.
- 4:30 PM – Head to my local coffee shop with the iPad and Magic Keyboard. This is where I do my best public work. Reading into equity markets, writing blog content, tinkering with whatever creative or business project is loudest that day.
- 6:00 PM – Lunch, either out or at home. I genuinely love cooking for myself. There’s something meditative about a home-cooked meal in the middle of what most people would call a workday.
- 7:00 PM – Two hours of online poker. Yes, it’s in the schedule. No, I’m not sorry about it.
- 9:00 PM – Thirty minutes on the sofa. Another coffee. Decompress.
- 9:30 PM – Back to work. This block is reserved for the serious stuff: NP Ventures, business development, acquisition research. This is where the real chess happens.
- Midnight – Dinner prep. Home-cooked. Almost always.
- Late night – Wind down with whatever’s calling me: recording bedtime stories for Story Brew, experimenting with the language learning app, or just existing without an agenda for once.
Vampire Hours, But Make It Sustainable
I know what this looks like on paper. It looks like someone who hasn’t seen sunlight since 2023. But I’m more intentional about it than that. I make sure I’m catching daylight with walks to the farmers’ market, coffee breaks outside, and lunch somewhere with windows.
It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to remind my body that the sun still exists and I’m not, in fact, a creature of the night.
The other thing I’ve added is movement. Three times a week, I swap the poker session for the gym. And on non-gym days, I do three ten-minute home workouts spread through the day.
It sounds modest, but it adds up. And after years of watching what sitting at a desk does to a body over time, modest-but-consistent beats ambitious-but-never-actually-happening every single time. I’m not getting any younger. The body keeps score whether you track it or not.
The whole routine almost runs on my iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard. That setup gives me something I care about more than raw processing power: mobility.
I can pick it up and work from anywhere without losing a beat. Some days I’m at the coffee shop for six hours. Some days, I never leave the apartment. The device makes both options feel equally viable.
Final Thoughts
This routine is not exciting to describe, but it’s mine, and it gets the job done.
That said, 2026 is pushing on the edges of it. The goals I’ve set for myself this year with the app, the acquisitions, and the challenge are ambitious enough that I know things will shift. I’ve been going back and forth on poker: I love it, I’m genuinely decent at it, and my earnings from it aren’t something I’d wave away.
But there are only so many hours, and at some point, the question becomes what deserves them most.
The bigger wildcard is when someone else enters my life. I don’t say that with any hesitation or resentment. Quite the opposite. I’m the most flexible person I know. I can restructure my entire day around someone without losing myself in the process.
The timezone is already adjusted. The schedule is already fluid. If things continue the way they’re going, I’ll adapt further, and I’ll do it gladly.
There’s a version of this routine that’s a little less solitary. A little more shared. I think I’d like that.
But for now, 1 PM alarm, coffee, checklist, iPad, and the occasional text to London. It works.