Grace

7.00 AM

Being a night owl and decidedly not a morning person, I must snooze the alarm at least twice to feel human. By 7.15 am, however, I decided enough is enough and leave the warmth of my bed. I like to have a slightly different breakfast each morning since I had some muesli and fruit yesterday, today will be two slices of toast with cheese, avocado and some tomato relish. After I’ve eaten, I spend some time packing my bag for the day, finishing my morning ablutions, and getting dressed.

8.00 AM

I leave the house and take a quick walk to my nearest bus stop. I live in a suburb with no train station, which means I am at the mercy of buses that like to come early, late, or even not at all. Good practice for me is to check the Trip View app before I leave the house to figure out if I need to run madly for the bus stop or walk at a sedate pace.

8.30 AM

The bus drops me off at Bondi Junction Interchange, and now I rush down to the train platform to catch the service to Martin Place.

8.50 AM

I arrive at the station and take a brisk 10-minute walk to the office. The slightly chilly morning air refreshes me, and I feel ready for the day when I reach the building’s lobby. I take the elevator up to the 20th floor and I have arrived!

I press my card key to the door and finally enter the office.

Many have already arrived, but more will trickle in. I sit down at my desk and begin my workday. I like to do several things in this order:

1. Check my calendar for today’s meetings
   • I have a client meeting from 12.00 pm – 1.30 pm.
   • There is a team problem-solving session from 3.00 pm – 4.00 pm.
2. Check emails
   • The partner on my team has sent the client a weekly update email that details several pieces of work we have completed since the previous update. It’s super useful to give this a read as it presents a holistic view of where we are at on the project and what our next steps are.
   • The partner has also sent an email to the team enquiring if we looked at which international airlines have participated in sustainable aviation fuel trials or projects. My main workstream now is this sustainable aviation fuel investigation, and I was already underway with this analysis. I send off a reply that summarises what I have found so far.
   • Some meetings have been set up for company ‘Meet the Partner’ and ‘Download’ events. These occur every three months or so and are a chance to highlight and introduce a partner to the wider firm, get to know some new starters and hear about the strategic actions the company has taken. I accept these invites and they pop into my Outlook calendar.
3. Check my notes from yesterday’s meeting.
4. I jot down a list of my tasks for the day, in order of priority.

Now that I have a clearer picture of my day, I relax a bit and realise that I am feeling a bit peckish. This means it’s coffee and snack time. I head on over to the kitchen and my favourite biscuit is there!

We recently had a new coffee machine installed, and I can’t resist the call of a caffeine hit.

Steaming mug in one hand, biscuits in the other, I walk back to my desk and begin to tackle my tasks.

I am currently working on a sustainable aviation fuel information pack for a client, who is interested in the industry outlook and what opportunities or risks there are for them. I am already on version three of this pack, and as I look over my notes, I begin making a version four ‘ghost deck’ which is essentially a set of slides that have lead lines (the key insight) that tell a logical story from beginning to end. I move some completed slides in and begin working on the empty ones.

11.20 AM

Today is relatively unusual in that we have a meeting during our usual lunchtime between 12.00 pm - 1.00 pm. Rather than wait for the client meeting to end at 1.30 pm, I grab my jacket and head downstairs to buy some lunch from the Chifley building.

Chifley has a decent selection of food and more importantly, it’s only 2 minutes away. I order a salmon sashimi poke bowl today as I feel like something relatively healthy. It’s already 11.35 am once the food is ready and given that the meeting starts at 12 sharp, I scarf it down before heading back to the office. Usually, when I have more time, or I have brought my lunch from home, I will take my food back to the office and eat it at our shared table. It’s a great time to catch up with people and you learn a lot of interesting things.

11.55 AM

When I get back upstairs, it's nearly time for the meeting. No one is at the lunch table yet because it’s slightly too early.

I grab my laptop, pencil and notebook and start searching for an empty meeting room. It doesn’t take long, and by 11.58 am I have the laptop plugged into the monitor in the meeting room.

12.00 PM

The client meeting starts!

There are people on this call who are in Singapore, the Northern Territory and Sydney. Client representatives, along with lawyers and engineers are also present. It’s amazing how we can all chat with each other with the click of a button.

The meeting is about relatively technical topics, so I am writing notes as I go along so I can research what I don’t understand later. As these discussions involve senior people from multiple firms, my role in the meeting is mostly to listen and learn while the partner fields questions.

1.30 PM

The meeting ends and I go back to my list of tasks for the day.

2.55 PM

Time truly flies when you are focused. I check the time on my screen, and it is already time for the team problem-solving session.

The focus of this session is to talk through my sustainable aviation fuel work. I summarise the work I have done focusing on the key insights and the others in the team will occasionally ask questions. I have been at the firm for less than three months, so the advice from more experienced people and the observations they share with me are super valuable. As a team, we check that the current slides adhere to the overall story, and where things need improvement, we brainstorm ideas.

By the time we have fe discussed everything, the story has been refined and the partner has structured some slides on the whiteboard. I snap a picture of these on my phone and upload them to the PowerPoint to create later.

After this, there is still another team member’s workstream to discuss. By the time the meeting wraps up, it is 4.50 pm, it has gone a little longer than usual but there was a lot to go through and the insights we made were very valuable.

5.00 PM

I begin winding down for the day. I reread my notes from the meeting and jot down a list of new tasks that have arisen from it. There are a couple of tasks that are quick tweaks to a slide’s formatting for example, changing the colour of a bar chart and rewording a sentence or two that I decide to do now.

5.40 PM

I tidy my desk and take my mug to the kitchen sink for a wash. Then I grab my jacket, and laptop bag and leave the office for the day.

6.20 PM

I arrive at a Japanese restaurant where I am meeting my friend for dinner tonight. I ordered their specialty unagi dish which allows you to try it three ways; on its own, with some toppings and then drizzled in some savoury dashi broth. While eating delicious food I catch up with my friend. Luckily, she works nearby so it’s easy for us to organise dinners together.

8.15 PM

Dinner is concluded and we head home!

9.00 PM

I arrive home tired but satisfied with my day. It was very productive, and I got to hang out with a friend! I spend a little time on the internet today. The YouTube algorithm has me watching a documentary about the US healthcare system.

11.00 PM

I start to feel sleepy around this time and begin my bedtime routine. My ideal sleeping time is 6 - 7.5 hours. By the time it's midnight, I am asleep.

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