Ever wondered what a day in the life of one of our consultants was like? This series will give you all the details! Our “Day in the Life” subject is Page Schmidt, a Principal Consultant located in Nashville, TN. Here’s what a typical day looks like for Page.
Morning
My morning usually starts around 7:30AM. I aspire to cook breakfast in the mornings, but most often I just grab a protein bar, give my pets breakfast (in addition to my boyfriend, I have a dog and a cat as roommates), and head outside to throw a ball for my dog.
Once at my desk (around 8:15AM), I catch up on any early morning Teams chats or emails and plan my day. Sometimes I can get some ticket work done before our standup at 9:00AM, where our project team provides updates on their tasks and identifies any blockers that we need to address.
A couple of days a week, we have internal Coffee Talks and Tech Talks with our local office. Coffee Talks provide a great opportunity to catch up with team members that we don’t work with directly on a project. They start with a conversation prompt (ex. what is your favorite dinosaur and why?) and always result in great conversations. The team also takes turns leading a weekly informal Tech Talk, where someone presents on a technology topic they’re interested in.
The rest of my morning is typically spent writing code (we’re building several .NET Core microservices on my current project, so lots of C#), reviewing other developers’ changes, collaborating with team members on solution designs, or prepping for any upcoming client presentations.
If my dog has been thoroughly exercised, he can be seen on Zoom calls snoozing behind me in his chair. If not, he will spend the meeting casually dropping his ball in my lap.
Lunch Time
At lunch time, my boyfriend and I will reconvene in the kitchen to eat lunch and consult on our respective project challenges. These days we mostly eat lunch at home, which is typically either something heated up from the night before or a turkey wrap.
Afternoon
My afternoon closely resembles my morning, although this is typically when our longer scrum meetings are scheduled like backlog refinement, sprint planning, or retrospectives. I like to get a few hours of heads-down work in at this point in the day, but there is usually a good bit of “pop-up” collaborative time with other team members as we work through our respective tasks.
After Work
After work, I like to get my dog out for a walk (or at least another ball-throwing session in the yard). Once he’s exercised, I get my own workout in, which is usually a jog or Pilates class. We sometimes cook dinner in the evenings, but I like to do most of our meal prep on Sunday or early in the week.
I usually have a project or two that I spend time on in the evenings. For balance, I try to work on things that are different from how I spend my work hours (away from the screen). I’m trying to bring some decoration into our house, so my last few evenings have been spent painting furniture and making macramé hangers for the few surviving plants in our home.
