John Milton's Daily Routine

John Milton wrote Paradise Lost and Areopagitica, a landmark defence of a free press. Blind for the last 20 years of his life, he built the poem in his head, so his writing routine was really a routine for remembering. He made every line before anyone wrote it down.

He rose at 4:00 AM, had the Bible read to him, then lay alone composing as many lines as his memory could hold. When his aide arrived to take dictation at 7:00 AM, he emptied his head onto the page, and if the man was late Milton complained that he wanted to be milked. Reading until lunch and a garden walk filled the rest of the day, as Podio's 2014 chart draws it from Mason Currey's Daily Rituals.

It's for people whose best ideas arrive before dawn and fade by lunch, and for anyone who thinks better out loud or in their head than at a keyboard. It suits a mind that needs quiet to compose and company to recover.

You get a long stretch of composing while the house is silent, a daily walk that clears your head and an evening spent with people. Try it today by getting up an hour earlier and thinking the day's hardest piece through before you pick up a pen. Rising at 4:00 AM all year, not 5:00 AM in winter, and the same day all week are our simplifications.