Haruki Murakami's Framework

When he is writing a novel, Murakami keeps one day for six months to a year without variation. Up at four. Five or six hours of work while the house is quiet. In the afternoon a ten-kilometre run or a 1,500-metre swim, or both. Then reading, music, and bed at nine. He told the Paris Review that the repetition itself becomes a form of mesmerism, a way of reaching a deeper state of mind, and that writing a long book is closer to survival training than to art. Physical strength matters as much as sensibility. This week draws it as the Podio chart does: a nine-to-four night, an eight-hour morning block of creative work, an hour of hard exercise at noon and a long, unhurried afternoon and evening. Murakami himself says five or six hours of writing, so treat the eighth as the chart's rounding. It suits anyone with one big thing to finish and the freedom to make everything else, including people, wait until the afternoon.