A (new) day in the life: Katie Levans

For the last two months, Agenda has been my all day, every day so I thought it’d be worth sharing what life looks like now that I’m out on my own.

5:30am alarm: UP. I used to really drag in the morning but since we’re currently (and possibly always) running our site manually instead of scheduling posts out, we have to be up the run the machine. The early rise is like second nature to me now. I can’t even sleep past 6:30am on the weekends. I make coffee, chug a liter of water (for real) and get settled in at my desk by 6am because it takes me about 30 minutes to pull all the triggers required to publish each story and send out the newsletter.

6:30am:  As soon as I hit send on the newsletter I start running all of our social for the day. I use Bitly, Hootsuite and Facebook Debugger to get all our stuff scheduled out across Twitter and FB all day. This takes about an hour and I like to move my laptop to the counter so I can stand for that task. Helps wake me up.

7:30am: Now, two hours into the day is when I pause for my life. I say goodbye to my boyfriend (who’s off to his day-long bar exam prep course) and make first breakfast (I always have two breakfasts), which is toast with egg whites and spinach. Everyone always thinks I’m vegan but I’m not, as evidenced by these eggs.

8:15am: I go to the Dowd Y religiously. I love it. On this particular day I do a 15-minute HIIT run on the treadmill alternating 45 seconds at a 10-min/mile pace with 15 seconds at a 7:30-min/mile pace followed by an arm strength training circuit. In and out in under an hour.

9:15am: I know that this is going to be a heavy writing day for me because I was hungover on Friday from my birthday party and need to catch up. So I take the long way home, driving a loop through South End and Uptown to get photos to use as fodder on Instagram since I won’t be seeing the light of day again for several more hours. We’re averaging 1,000 followers/week on Insta and I want to keep it moving all the time so I run by The Gallery because it just opened and Romare Bearden because it’s easy on the eyes. When I get home I make breakfast 2, which is a blueberry smoothie bowl with peanut butter and coconut.

10am: Back at the desk. I don’t have any meetings or interviews until 3:30pm so the plan is to just crank pieces out. We publish 2/day from me but I’m shooting to produce 4 today. My work style is odd in that I have to be almost completely isolated (or in a coffee shop with general background noise) to get anything done. So I disappear into a black hole of productivity where I edit photos, write my stuff, plan out my editorial calendar for the week and try to clear out my inbox.

1:30pm: I emerge from my hole for lunch. Tofu pot pie and cabbage salad because I’m a child but I like to eat vegetables. I eat while wrangling my inbox, wrapping up pieces and starting to pull together tomorrow’s newsletter.

2:45pm: I’ve got an interview coming up but snapchat tells me several of my friends are at Whole Foods so I take the long way to crash their party for a hot second. Human interaction is necessary at this point.

3:30pm: I’m at Tabor to interview House Account’s VP of Marketing for the piece that ran Wednesday on their mobile app. I like to save my face-to-face stuff for the afternoons so that I can be super productive in the morning without distractions but also so I can do my fun, energizing, social stuff when I’m starting to drag. At this point the “work” day has been rolling for about 10 hours (but it doesn’t feel like work).

4:45pm: I counter my visit to Whole Foods with a stop at Healthy Home Market to support local by buying an expensive bar. I eat a lot of overpriced trendy health foods that really seem to annoy people but I feel freaking awesome so I don’t even care anymore. Judge me. I’ve got about an hour to kill before I need to head to Crossfit Dilworth to check out a new bootcamp so I troll through our social (which I do all day) and eat my expensive, gold-wrapped bar.

6:30pm: I promised Emily (known as Breeze) that I’d come try out her $5 Monday night bootcamp at Crossfit Dilworth so here I am. I run into none other than Miller Yoho (who wrote about this workout on Wednesday) and proceed to get my butt kicked for the next hour of sprints, lunges, squat jumps and abs. Brutal.

8pm: I get home and immediately start rummaging up dinner, which tonight includes rice, tofu, baked potatoes, broccoli and hummus. I love white potatoes. Don’t let anyone tell you they’re bad.

9pm: I plop down in front of the TV to catch the end of The Bachelorette (JUDGE ME) and put the finishing touches on the newsletter for tomorrow. I wrap up around 10pm and head to bed to read. I’ve committed to reading a book a week since I turned 30 so this is my new routine, to read myself to sleep.

11pm: Bedtime. Same dance tomorrow!