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Don’t design your day from scratch. Adopt a schedule that already works, then make it yours.
Don’t design your day from scratch. Adopt a schedule that already works, then make it yours.
50 frameworks
Finish your deep work by 5:30 PM and keep the evening. Cal Newport plans every minute of his workday, after a morning run and 25 pull-ups.
Give your first 4 hours to family, exercise and thinking. Spotify's Daniel Ek wakes at 6:30 AM and doesn't start work until 10:30 AM.
Go to bed early and the morning becomes yours. Bryan Johnson is in bed by 8:30 PM, up at 5:00 AM without an alarm and exercising by 5:30 AM.
Skip the listicles and get the sourced day. Steve Jobs worked from 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM when he returned to Apple in 1997, Walter Isaacson reports.
Try ending each day on a question. Alexander Graham Bell worked from 9:30 PM to 4:30 AM, set a problem in his mind, then slept until noon.
Get a maker's schedule inside a manager's day. Paul Graham did business until dinner, then programmed from dinner until about 3:00 AM.
Keep learning after a full day's work. Thomas Edison was at his lab by 8:00 AM, home for tea at 6:00 PM, then studied until 11:00 PM.
Own your first 2 hours before the meetings start. Tim Cook wakes before 5:00 AM for email and sales data, then trains for an hour.
Keep your best hours for your best ideas. Airbnb's Brian Chesky starts slow, books nothing before 10:00 AM and saves 9:30 PM onward for creative work.
Build a side project without quitting your job. Brian Armstrong worked a day job until 7:00 PM, then built Coinbase from 8:00 PM to midnight.
Do great work in 40 hours a week and still sleep in. David Heinemeier Hansson wakes without an alarm at 8:30 AM and starts work at 11:00 AM.
Do the most important thing first and keep weekends free. Andrej Karpathy exercises for an hour, has one coffee, then goes straight to his top task.
Audit a real day before you fix your calendar. Intel's Andy Grove logged one of his own, from 8:00 AM to 6:15 PM, meeting by meeting.
Have dinner with your family and still get quiet hours for hard problems. Demis Hassabis starts a second workday at 10:00 PM and peaks around 1:00 AM.
See what total absorption in one subject looks like. Isaac Newton studied until 2:00 or 3:00 AM and often ate standing up. A portrait, not a plan.
Give each weekday one kind of work and switch less. Jack Dorsey woke at 5:00 AM to meditate, walked 5 miles to work and ate once a day.
Give work 8 hours and keep the other 16 for sleep and life. Jason Fried sleeps from 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM and caps his week at 40 hours.
Make fewer, better decisions. Jeff Bezos keeps his mornings slow, takes no meeting before 10:00 AM and holds his hardest meetings before lunch.
Get 8 hours of deep work from two 4-hour blocks, with exercise in between. Lex Fridman runs his day in a fixed order and eats once a day.
Cut the meetings and there's time to play every day. Mark Cuban works almost entirely by email and plays an hour of basketball each morning.
Fit a walk and a nap into a serious working day. Albert Einstein walked to work at 10:30 AM, worked until 1:00 PM, then lunched and napped.
Build a long day around one fixed ritual. Nikola Tesla worked in his lab from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, dined at 8:00 PM sharp, then went back to work.
See how completely one subject can fill a day. Paul Erdős did mathematics from 8:00 AM to 1:30 AM, a pace he kept up with amphetamines.
Working a day job and still want to write? Kurt Vonnegut got four hours of writing done by ten, then swam before lunch and kept his evenings free.
Do your ideas arrive before dawn and fade by lunch? John Milton's routine puts the thinking first, then gives the afternoon to walking and company.
Low on energy? Flannery O'Connor wrote just three focused hours a day and finished two novels and 32 stories, a routine that respects your limits.
Be the person who does their sharpest work by lunch and stops on time. W. H. Auden started early, finished firmly and kept every evening for friends.
Become someone who plans every hour on purpose, with Benjamin Franklin's routine that opens with a morning question and closes with an honest review.
Protect your best thinking by doing it first. Immanuel Kant wrote at dawn, taught all morning and saved long lunches and walks for later in the day.
Borrow Maya Angelou's routine of writing in a bare room where nothing else can happen, then coming home to reread the day's pages over a quiet dinner.
Bring fresh ideas to your day job by keeping mornings for yourself. Le Corbusier painted alone until two, then walked into his architecture studio.
Try the routine behind Les Misérables, with Victor Hugo's writing at dawn, a cold bath at eleven and an afternoon of hard exercise to clear his head.
Busy days leaving only scraps of time? Mozart composed around a packed schedule of lessons and concerts. Borrow how he split his day, not his sleep.
Get your most important work done in one long, unbroken morning, then walk it off. Beethoven composed until mid-afternoon and never worked after dark.
Do your best thinking in fewer hours. Charles Darwin worked in short, focused sessions each day and filled the gaps with walks, letters and rest.
Finish the long project you keep putting off with Haruki Murakami's routine of writing before breakfast, a hard run every day and bed by nine.
Write two thousand words a day and still keep your evenings, with Charles Dickens's routine of five quiet hours at the desk and a long afternoon walk.
Learn to fit serious writing around a demanding job. Sigmund Freud saw patients all day, walked fast after lunch and wrote late into the night.
Settle into Vladimir Nabokov's unhurried routine of writing standing up, strolling by the lake and napping after lunch, with room for work all day.
Hate early starts? Kingsley Amis lingered over breakfast and the papers, but the writing began at the same hour each day. A routine for slow starters.
Give your hardest work the freshest hours. Thomas Mann wrote behind a closed door from nine to noon and saved letters and reading for the afternoon.
Ease back into work after illness or burnout with Richard Strauss's gentle routine of short sessions, long walks, good meals and ten hours of sleep.
Become someone whose best ideas arrive on foot. Tchaikovsky composed morning and evening and walked for exactly two hours in between, in any weather.
Keep your life orderly so your work can be bold. Gustave Flaubert's routine was as regular as a clock and gave ten long hours a day to the page.
Make the most of a night-owl body clock with Pablo Picasso's routine of slow mornings, a studio door shut at two and painting well past midnight.
Turn late nights into your most productive hours with William Styron's routine of sleeping until noon, then four focused hours of writing from four.
Try Balzac's all-night writing routine when a deadline looms, sleeping at dusk and working through the silent hours while everyone else sleeps.
Stuck in a day job with no time to create? Franz Kafka worked the office, slept through the evening and wrote his best stories after midnight.
See what total absorption really looks like. Voltaire dictated from bed all morning and worked deep into the night, a routine to learn from, not copy.
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