Haruki Murakami's Daily Routine

Haruki Murakami is the Japanese novelist behind Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore and 1Q84, and a committed long-distance runner. His writing routine has one surprising rule: while he is working on a novel, he keeps the same day, without variation, for 6 months to a year.

He gets up at 4:00 AM and writes for 5 or 6 hours while the house is quiet. In the afternoon he runs 10 km or swims 1,500 m, then reads and listens to music until bed at 9:00 PM. In the 2004 Paris Review interview that Mason Currey quoted on his Daily Routines blog, he calls the repetition a form of mesmerism that takes him to a deeper state of mind.

It's for anyone with one big thing to finish, such as a book, a thesis or a long build, who can make everything else wait until after lunch. It suits people who lose weeks to deciding what to do each day.

You get the whole morning for the work, a daily session that keeps your body strong enough to carry it and an evening that ends early. He says a long novel is like survival training, so start smaller: pick one project and repeat the same morning for a month. The writing block drawn to noon, the afternoon timings and the same day all week are our estimates.