Neil Patel’s Daily Schedule

“I’m an early riser, mainly because my kids wake up early and they cry. So you got to pick them up, feed them their milk. I love it to death. And then I brush my teeth.”

“I work out and I shower… my workouts are high-intensity interval training, in which I can get them done within 15 minutes, 30 minutes at the latest.”

“ I usually follow a guy named Joe, The Body Coach… the lessons are usually just 15 to 20 minutes and they don’t require equipment or weights. And when I’m traveling, I can do them too.”

“This is when I answer emails. Even though I go to sleep with my inbox checked, I wake up with a lot of emails. Keep in mind, my company has over 700 employees and 900 plus clients, so, I got to answer those emails.”

“Typically, I read what’s happening in the economy, or even in the marketing industry. From Google’s stock price to algorithm updates, I try to stay in touch with anything happening with the marketing industry, as well as the platforms that are publicly traded.”
Neil Patel

“I spend a lot of my day on phone calls. In the mornings, I have two hours blocked off for phone calls. I try not to make them long. I usually try to get most of my calls down to 15 minutes, not 30 minutes, not 1 hour, 15 minutes. Sometimes I drag onto 30 minutes. I hate scheduling hour calls because they tend to be inefficient for most things.”

“I look at people’s marketing. Seriously, I block off an hour in my day to study other people’s marketing, and not just people in my industry. I literally look at sites in all verticals, and that way, I can see what they’re doing, what’s working, and learn from them. You can use tools from Ubersuggest to SimilarWeb to give you this data. This gives me ideas on what people are doing, and maybe I can take some of those approaches and tactics and apply it to my industry.”

“I talk on the phone a lot, and when I say a lot, I really do mean a lot. Most of my calls are about marketing, growth experiments, and ways we can grow even our own business.”

“This is my first meal of the day. They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but I do intermittent fasting, and this helps give me more energy. I’m not saying you should do it or you shouldn’t; it’s just how my body operates. I also don’t really eat much sugar and I don’t drink coffee. I also try to do meetings during lunch so I can kill two birds with one stone. If I don’t have a meeting, I’m usually able to finish up my lunch in 15 minutes.”

“I also do intermittent fasting. I’ll only eat between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. and then the rest of the time I don’t eat. I also don’t eat unhealthy, so like no fried food, no Samosas, I try to keep low on the carb, like a lot of vegetables no unhealthy food like mayonnaise or cheese or fried food or any of that.”

“I create content. Whether it’s for social media or videos, or even blog posts, or just thinking about ideas, I create time for content. For example, I write my own YouTube scripts. Even if it only takes a few hours to film 16 videos each month, it takes me roughly eight hours to write out my scripts and come up with ideas.”

“I play with my kids. The beauty of working from home is you can set your own schedule. The way I clear my mind and relax is by having fun and playing with my kids. It’s not for the longest time, but I make every moment count. And when I’m with them, I’m playing with them 100% of the time, paying attention to them 100% of the time. I don’t have my phone, I’m not distracted. I make my time count.”

“It’s rare that I’m on the phone for less than four hours a day. At least for one hour of my calls, I talk to other marketers, and here’s why, I can see what they are doing, what they are testing out, what’s working for them, what’s happening in their personal lives as well because some of these people are friends. And I tend to talk to other marketers in the later part of my day because they have more free time because they’re not busy, cranking and working on their business or working at their job.”

“I read. From industry websites to news websites like BBC, I like to know what’s happening in the marketing industry, as well as what’s happening in the world. Keep in mind, the world affects marketing. For example, we saw this in 2020, COVID shut down a lot of factories and it caused E-commerce to boom. That’s an example of what happens in the world can affect marketing.”

“I eat dinner with my family. I don’t do this every single day, but I do try to eat dinner with my wife and kids whenever possible, majority of the time I do it. I want to keep my family as a unit, and I think it’s very important. So that way, when my kids grow up, they understand the value of family time and spending with each other.”

“I help my wife put the kids to bed. I play with them a bit, read some books. I have to convince them to go to bed or take a shower. It’s always a fun experiment negotiating with little kids.”

“I spend some time talking to my wife. My wife is super easygoing. All she asks from me is 10 minutes of undivided attention a day. I feel that’s not giving her much, so I give her at least 30 minutes. And, of course, I talk to her throughout the day because she’s home. So in theory, I spend more than 30 minutes with my wife and my kids each and every single day. But I do like to block up some time just for my wife so she can tell me what’s happening in the day, what’s happening with the kids, anything I should know about, any help she may need from me, any things that we have to plan for the future.”

“Researching. My brain is a bit weird. I tend to want to learn about things like space, history, new technologies, or even other businesses. For some reason, I can’t turn my mind off when it comes to working or learning. So I just lean into it and give my mind what I want.”

“I check emails, get ready for bed. One note is I actually check my emails each hour when I’m doing other tasks, but I want to make sure my inbox is fully clean. So that way, before I go to sleep, I don’t wake up with too many emails or else I’ll be in the morning responding to 500 or 1,000 emails.”