How Kant, Darwin, Mozart, Tesla, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos actually spent their days, hour by hour. Each one is rebuilt from letters, interviews and biographies, with the sources on its page. Run any of them as your own week, or remix it to fit.
49 frameworks
Write 4 hours before your day job begins. Kurt Vonnegut wrote from 5:30 AM, swam before lunch, taught in the afternoon and was asleep by 10:00 PM.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Make a night-owl body clock work for you. Pablo Picasso slept late, saw friends until 3:00 PM, then painted until 2:30 AM with a break for dinner.
Compose before dawn, then walk it off. Blind, John Milton wrote Paradise Lost in his head from 4:00 AM and spent his afternoons pacing his garden.
Get real writing done in three focused hours a day. Flannery O'Connor wrote from 9:00 AM to noon, then gave the afternoon to rest and her peacocks.
Do your sharpest work early and stop on time. W.H. Auden started soon after 6:00 AM and kept a hard stop at 6:30 PM for friends and dinner.
Finish the big project by running one day on repeat. Haruki Murakami writes from 4:00 AM, runs or swims after, and is in bed by 9:00 PM.
Fit serious writing around a full day job. Sigmund Freud saw patients morning and evening, took a fast walk after lunch and wrote until 1:00 AM.
Spread your writing across a calm, full day. Vladimir Nabokov wrote morning and afternoon, walked by the lake and played Scrabble in Cyrillic.
Get the work done without an early start. Kingsley Amis wrote from 9:30 AM to 1:00 PM, took a long pub lunch and a nap, then wrote until 7:00 PM.
Plan every hour on purpose. Benjamin Franklin's timetable opens at 5:00 AM by asking what good he'll do and closes by asking what good he did.
Guard an hour of thinking before work. Immanuel Kant wrote at dawn, lectured all morning, then took a long lunch, his walk and bed at 10:00 PM.
Find one room where only the work can happen. Maya Angelou wrote in a bare hotel room from 7:00 AM, then reread her pages over a quiet dinner.
Give your hardest work the freshest hours. Thomas Mann wrote behind a closed door from 9:00 AM to noon and kept the afternoon for reading and letters.
Ease back into work after illness or burnout. Richard Strauss composed in 2 short sittings, walked twice and slept 10 hours on his 1892 rest cure.
Get 13 hours of writing done before dinner. Honoré de Balzac went to bed at 6:00 PM, rose at 1:00 AM and wrote through the night on black coffee.
See what total absorption looks like. Voltaire dictated from bed all morning and worked 18 hours a day, breaking only for a carriage ride and supper.
Fit your own work around a paid job at both ends of the day. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart taught from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM and composed until 1:00 AM.
Do all your creative work before mid-afternoon and never after dark. Ludwig van Beethoven composed from dawn to 2:30 PM, then went walking.
Keep mornings for your own work and bring it to the day job after lunch. Le Corbusier painted alone all morning, then ran his architecture studio.
Try a dawn writing session and a cold plunge before lunch. Victor Hugo wrote until 11:00 AM, then poured icy water over himself on the roof.
Do your best work in two short, protected sittings. Charles Darwin worked 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM and 10:30 AM to noon, with walks and a nap around them.
Write all morning, then walk for three hours to think it through. Charles Dickens wrote from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM and walked London until 5:00 PM.
Let your best ideas find you on foot. Tchaikovsky composed morning and evening and walked for exactly 2 hours after lunch, in any weather.
Make room for serious writing around a full-time job. Franz Kafka left the office at 2:30 PM, slept through the early evening and wrote from 11:00 PM.
Keep your life orderly so your work can be bold. Gustave Flaubert woke at 10:00 AM and wrote from 2:00 PM into the small hours, every day alike.
Build your day around a late body clock. William Styron slept until noon, wrote for 4 hours from 4:00 PM and stayed up until 3:00 AM.
