Tasneem Ghazaly

6.45 AM

First alarm. Hit snooze

7.00 AM

Second alarm. Hit snooze

7.25 AM

Check my phone in case I slept through half the day. Still, got some time to be lazy? Phew! Call my partner whilst I scroll through Instagram to make sure he hasn’t slept through his alarms either.

7.40 AM

Get out of bed finally and take a quick shower. Change into the clothes I have laid out the night before and grab my lunch from the fridge.

8.00 AM

I grab my handbag and laptop bag, chuck on my trainers and start the walk to work. I either call my partner and talk to him about the day ahead or listen to music.

8.20 AM

Pulling my tag from my pocket, I hit level 8 on the elevator button and take the lift to the office. It’s almost always busy where the risk and management advisors team sits so I make a beeline straight for the cyber section. I’m more likely to find a desk there (and I can see the waterfront!). I leave my bags on the desk and head to my locker to take out my heels, water bottle and mug from my locker.

8.35 AM

I sit down at my desk with my breakfast and water and check my emails. I like to see what my day looks like and if any urgent emails have come through. I know I need to work on a review for the secondment I am on and create some template policies and frameworks for future client engagements. These are all due within the next week. Once I’ve made a to-do list for the day and checked when my meetings are, I grab my mug.

8.55 AM

Checking in if any of my team members want to go get a coffee, I head upstairs to level 9 to place my coffee order with Eddie (same order every day, hazelnut latte). We have a quick chat about our week, what we have going on and what interesting thing happened last night.

9.05 AM

Back at my desk and I start my work through my tasks for the day. I start by finishing up some admin tasks for the secondment. I know I have a meeting at 9:30 am so I don’t want to start anything that will take too much time.

9.25 AM

I update my calendar with what I have done (this is so I can refer to it at the end of the day when I need to submit my timesheet) and head over to the middle of the floor to have my first meeting of the day.

9.30 AM

 I meet another graduate advisor to go over learnings from a previous engagement. This is to help her on a similar engagement she has coming up. We discuss the ways to use data analytics and what to look out for in this audit

9.58 AM

We wrap up the meeting and I head back to my desk to continue work. I block out 2 hours on my calendar to work on the template policies and framework. Because this is self-driven work, I chuck on my headphones and get through as much as I can.

11.00 AM

 I’m starting to lag in my ability to concentrate on this one thing, I think it’s time to take a break. I check my to-do list to double-check that I need to send some emails on my secondment and swap them over to the client’s laptop. I spend an hour doing that before I head out to the gym.

12.00 PM

I lock my laptop and grab my gym gear and shower stuff and head up the road to my gym. Depending on the meetings I have during the day, I will either gym during lunch or go boxing after work. Today, I only have 3 meetings that are quite spaced out so lunchtime gym it is! 

12.55 PM

Energized, showered and back on level 8! I grab my food from the fridge (cheese, ham slices, bread, avocado and capsicum hummus to make a sandwich). 

1.05 PM

Back at my desk, I have two meetings starting from 1:30 pm, so I make sure I have all information and questions ready for those.

2.30 PM

Meetings done and from them, I have a few points I need to action (i.e., talk to this person about this process, check with this person how they are getting on with that action etc.).

3.00 PM

I know my day tomorrow is going to be quite busy and I have to prepare something for Monday, so I block out my calendar for half an hour to work on the admin for Coffee Roulette. Coffee Roulette is where you get matched with someone across One Consulting at KPMG every two weeks and you can go for coffee to get to know each other. I am the administrator for it, and it is time to pair up the participants for next week's round.

3.30 PM

Time to go back to the review I was doing for my secondment. I can get a good chunk done now that I have no urgent tasks for the rest of the day.

4.55 PM

Almost home time! I go onto our internal system and enter my timesheet for the day. Here I work on how many hours I worked on each project during the day.

5.05 PM

Home time! Changing into my trainers, I start walking home.

5.35 PM

Home and time to unpack my bag and chat with my flatties about my day. I set up for the next day at this time too (putting my clothes away, packing my lunch into the fridge etc). I usually watch some TV and call my partner whilst I eat.

9.30 PM

Into bed and I read for an hour before sleeping. Ready for the next day!

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