So every day we go through our lives and we do stuff. We may have a routine that we follow to add structure to our lives. Wake up. Check your phone. Look at the weather report. Move on with the day. Or wake up abruptly and turn off the alarm and go into "mode to get ready for the day quickly."  If we are employed then that employment does do its best to structure our lives. If we are retired we structure our lives the best that we can. For myself, being newly retired has given me the need to have the freedom to structure or not structure a day, or my life.  But we writers (and general creatives) see our lives as full of material for our work. Every time we see something, observe something happening or just experience it we have to do something that I call "cogitation" and sketch it out, write it out or talk it out with someone. This is how I get my material for writing.