Nikola Tesla's Daily Routine

Nikola Tesla invented the alternating-current system that still runs the world's power grids. His sleep schedule is famous for a myth, two hours a night, that the sources don't back up. What they do record is a daily routine built around a dinner that never moved.

In 1896 New York, biographer John O'Neill has him in the lab before 9:00 AM and working through the day. From 8:00 PM he dined at the Waldorf, with a stack of 18 napkins and the volume of every dish worked out before the first bite. Then he went back to the lab and worked through the night. A decade earlier, by his own account in My Inventions, his days had started later and ended earlier.

Take this one if your work comes in long stretches and needs a fixed point to hang the day on. It also suits people whose evenings usually vanish into leftover work.

You get two deep blocks with a dinner between them that marks the change, and a ritual to make the switch. Pick one fixed meal and let it divide your day. The late finish, the five hours of sleep and the evening walk are our estimates.