Cal Newport's Daily Routine

Cal Newport is a professor of computer science at Georgetown University and the author of Deep Work, his 2016 book on focus. The surprise in his daily schedule is the hard stop. He plans every minute of the workday, and it ends at 5:30 PM.

He wakes between 6:00 and 7:00 AM without an alarm, then runs to the park and does 25 pull-ups, as he told My Morning Routine in 2018. Breakfast is with his family and the paper, and his kids get him until 8:30 AM, with no email before then. After that the work follows a plan blocked out to the minute, a habit he explained on his blog in 2013.

It's for anyone buried in reactive work, who ends the day busy but without having moved the work that matters. It also suits people who want their evenings back and can't seem to stop working at 6:00 PM.

He calls the hard stop "fixed-schedule productivity". It makes every block earn its place, so the deep work gets done without spilling into the evening. Tonight, write tomorrow's blocks down, with an end time. The wake time, the meals and the weekend are our estimates.