A Week in the Life of a DAO Core Contributor

As facilitator of the Media Guild, I'm responsible for all the content and marketing that Cabin puts out.

The core functions of my job is a combination of deep work and immediacy.

The core routine for my daily schedule is based on Paul Graham's maker-manager schedule. I spend most mornings thinking, reading, and writing. Around 11 AM – 1PM EST, I flip the switch and spend the latter half of the day responding to Cabin contributors on Twitter and Discord.

Initially, I was doing my role part-time. Now I'm kicking things up up a notch and going full time at Cabin. Here's the full time core contributor schedule I've been following for the past few weeks.

A short message before we dive in: If you’re into DAOs and web3, you’ll probably enjoy my weekly newsletter on web3, creativity, and the creator economy. Subscribe below to get more posts, or check out previous editions to “try before you buy”.

My weekly schedule

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Sunday

My week starts on Sunday. Here, I do what Cal Newport calls the Sunday ritual where I plan and get a head start on my week.

After Sunday lunch with my family, I head to my favourite uptown coffeeshop. Again, I should feel like I'm getting ahead, not catching up.

1. I plan my day, week, and Monday

• I think about books or articles I want to read or videos I want to watch after the planning session. This usually motivates me to get the planning done faster.
  I decide on my main projects for Cabin, personal, and creativity. I schedule the work for specific days of the week and write down the weekly plan on an index card I'll have propped up on my desk for the rest of the week.

• I'm the WD-40 for the guild so at any point during the week, I need to be ready to jump in and help out on any of my team's projects. Because of this, I only list between active 2-3 high leverage projects for myself each week, in addition to my thinking and writing time.

• Finally, I timeblock my Monday, so I can hit the ground running the next day.

2. Get 2-3 hours of intellectual work done. Recently it's been doing MBA or MFA-related reading. I also like watching Masterclasses.

3. Go have dinner, hang out with people, watch a movie, etc. Try to sleep early.

Monday & Thursday

• I'm an introvert and meetings tire me out, so I batch them.

  • Monday and Thursday afternoons are for meetings. These are the only days that folks can pick a time from on my calendar link.

  • I picked these 2 days for my meeting days because others who batch meetings do some variation of M-W-F or T-Th. Doing M-Th lets me capture both camps.

  • On Thursdays, the Media Guild has its weekly community call. Here I've started asking each contributor for their MMDD — Made My Day Difficult. This helps me gain context on what my team's working on and what I can do to help them.

• I try to get 60-90 minutes of thinking time or focused work on my projects before my meetings.

Tuesday & Wednesday

• These two days are for deep time and reflection — no mandatory scheduled activities or meetings where I need to present or prep.

• On Tuesday morning, I try to complete my top priority project for Cabin. This is also a good time to read and do more thinking about problems I'm facing at work.

• On Wednesday morning, I begin thinking and writing that Friday's newsletter. I really like having this midweek buffer amidst the madness.

• Afternoons are usually spent on Discord and Twitter. If Discord is quiet, I try to end my day early.

Friday

• I keep Fridays open so I can use it to wrap up for the week: finish publishing an article, complete bounty payments for payday, respond to Discord or Twitter messages, write and send my newsletter, etc.

• I start jotting down notes and tasks for the following week and spend the rest of the day winding down for the weekend.

• I usually end my day with our weekly Cabin core contributor call where we write our weekly updates and get aligned on our projects and initiatives.

Saturday

On Saturdays, my goal is to be as unproductive as possible. The priority is to hang out with friends and family, journal, read novels, play ultimate or video games... All the stuff that might cause revenge bedtime procrastination during the week.

I'll also do my laundry. Maybe.

Other notes

• I'm under no obligation to work on the weekends and evenings. Regardless of when I start my day, I stop working between 5:00 – 7:00 PM for dinner. If I want to knock off some tasks afterwards, I'm free to do that. But I often have more fun things to do like play a video game, watch a show, or hang out with friends and family.

• I take Canadian holidays. This keeps my in sync with my IRL friends and family so I'm not just spending all my time with my online friends who are mostly American.

• I publish my weekly newsletter. This is a hallowed time to reflect and think deeply about problems I face at work.

• I stopped responding to Discord messages as part of my Sunday ritual. Unlike email, I can't write them on Sundays and schedule them to go out on Mondays. I ended up getting responses and getting sucked into work on Sundays, so I stopped.

  • Eventually, I might want to incorporate a more comprehensive weekly review here, including email and task inbox zero. We'll see.

• I use Freedom to block Twitter and Discord on my devices on weekends.