A day in life of an ex-software engineer in Bali

0:00Hey, I'm Mark. I'm a solo entrepreneur living in Bali with my Korean wife running seven tiny internet businesses and welcome to a day in my life. I wake up naturally around 6:00 a.m. when the sun rises in Bali. I don't have an alarm clock because I found sleep to be the most important factor on my happiness and overall

0:24stress. I drink a big glass of water and I don't do anything else. No work, no computer before at least 9:00 a.m. Around 6:30 a.m., I pick a surfboard and head to the beach for a surf session. Do you want to come with me? All right, let's go. I feed the dogs in the neighborhood, so

0:47they're usually pretty welcoming. I put my surfboard on the racks and head to the beach for a 5-minute scooter ride. There are tons of monkeys at the beach, but they normally don't care about me unless I have some food. I surf in the south part of Bali where the water is very clear and I often see turtles and sometimes shark and manta

1:12rays. I learned how to surf in Bali 5 years ago and since that it has been part of my daily routine. It gets me excited to get out of the bed and it also keeps me fit because I'm having so much fun and burning a bunch of calories. And overall, I feel like it's making me very happy. I surf for 2 hours almost every day

1:36before going to work. Then I drive back home, take a quick shower, and make myself my favorite drink, a caffe latte. And then I start my favorite activity of the day, reading. I started reading 3 years ago and it has changed my life. And then I prepare myself a little healthy breakfast. I prepare the breakfast with a bunch of seeds and nuts. Then I add some plain yogurt, a banana, red berries like strawberry and

2:07also blueberries. I usually eat breakfast alone and I start to think about the plan for the day. My wife and I are renting a villa in Bali for a couple years and we have a guest room that I turned into an office where I have a desk, a monitor, and it's a good place for me to work.

2:28I am a solo entrepreneur who can code. So, I built seven tiny internet businesses that are now making $55,000 per month. But I started 6 years ago and I almost lived like a cockroach for 5 years making about $1,000 per month. On a typical day, I would add new features to some of my apps or I would

2:50create a new app from scratch. I actually built some of those app live on YouTube. If you want to check the live stream part of my YouTube channel. I want to stay solo. So, I don't have any employees. So, I handle every part of the business such as marketing. So, I check the analytics. I make sure that the ads are running well. I handle customer support. And I also try to create some contents about everything that I learn and reshare it on Twitter and recently started this YouTube channel. I also have a newsletter with about 12,000 readers where I share

3:22everything that I've learned.

3:28A good chunk of my day is dedicated to creation, either content creation like on Twitter or which app to make next. So, I prioritize my sleep because I found out to be the best way to become creative and overall have the motivation to work and think properly. I spend most of the day offline meaning I don't check Twitter or emails and I

3:51use that time to create my own things. Around 4:00 p.m., about 2 hours before my work day is about to end, I go online on Twitter and I try to share everything that I've done and I've learned. The sun goes down around 6:30 p.m. in Bali and I use that time to close my

4:09computer and call it a day. And the rest of the day is dedicated for cooling off and spending time with my wife. We would typically order food on Gojek, the equivalent of Uber Eats in Indonesia, or we would go out to local restaurants. We sometimes have serious conversations, but most of the time we would end up

4:29teasing each other.

4:35We brush our teeth and we head to the playroom where it sounds a bit kinky this way, but we would typically play PS4 or watch movies together. Around 9:00 p.m., I dim all the lights in the villa, so I barely see anything, but that puts my body into sleep mode and I'm already kind of falling asleep before being into bed. I always do 15 minutes of stretching before going to bed. That helps me cool down and also my body gets stiff because of surfing, so that helps

5:04me become a bit flexible. I take a quick shower and read a few pages of a book before falling asleep and restarting the exact same day tomorrow.