I've tried every productivity tactic going. Batching days, Pomodoro, deep work in the mornings, the whole library. I'd stick with one for a week, then a small crisis would land in the middle of the day, the schedule would collapse, and I'd be too fried to rebuild it. So I'd default back to firefighting and feel guilty about it by 6pm.
The thing I eventually clocked is that the tiredness wasn't from the work. It was from remaking every decision from scratch every single day. Where to start, what to push, whether to skip the gym, what to eat, whether to take the call. By the time the actual work began, I was already running on fumes.
So I built an agent to do the deciding for me, every morning.
Here's how it works
- I started by writing it a short brief about me. How brittle I am once a plan breaks, how a mini detour can take out a whole day, what I'm working towards, what I'm trying to protect (sleep, gym, eating clean). The agent reads this before it does anything, so the schedule it produces actually sounds like one I'd follow.
- I fed it a handful of research papers on focus, recovery and brain performance. Nothing fancy, just dropped them in and told it to optimise for sustainable output rather than maximum output. That single instruction reshaped how it builds the day. It now leaves real recovery windows instead of stacking back-to-back blocks the way I always did to myself.
- I gave it access to my inboxes (email and WhatsApp), my Notion task list, my calendar and my stated weekly priorities. Every morning it pulls from all of that and works out what actually needs to happen today versus what can wait.
- I added my nutritional goals and food intolerances so it slots meals into the schedule too. Sounds small, but deciding what to eat was one of the biggest hidden drains in my day.
- Before it builds anything, it asks me to rate my energy on a scale of one to five. A one means the schedule is light, maybe one focused task, the gym becomes a walk, and the rest is recovery. A five means it stacks the day with deep work and a proper session. The scale sounds simple but it's the bit that stopped me running myself into the ground on low days and under-building on high ones.
- It drops the finished schedule into my calendar and sends me a short summary so I'm not staring at a wall of blocks first thing.
- The real unlock is mid-day. If something happens, an unexpected call, a bad mood, a friend in crisis, I just tell the agent what's going on and it reshuffles the rest of the day around it. I don't sit there trying to re-plan. I just keep moving.
Four weeks in, I'm working, training and eating clean at the same time, which is something I've genuinely never managed to hold for more than a fortnight. The output is up and the guilt is mostly gone. The interesting bit isn't the schedule itself, it's that I stopped paying the mental tax of building one.
Tools used
- Claude Code agent: the brain, runs every morning and handles re-plans on demand
- Notion: tasks and weekly priorities
- Gmail and WhatsApp: inbox signal for what actually needs attention today
- Google Calendar: where the finished schedule lands
- Perplexity: pulled the research papers on focus and recovery I fed it