Paul Erdős's Daily Routine
See how completely one subject can fill a day. Paul Erdős did mathematics from 8:00 AM to 1:30 AM, a pace he kept up with amphetamines.
By Colin PaceUpdated
Overview
Paul Erdős was one of the most prolific mathematicians who ever lived, with some 1,500 papers written with hundreds of collaborators. His daily routine was a 19-hour working day, almost all of it mathematics.
He was up at 4:30 or 5:00 AM and worked from 8:00 AM until 1:30 the next morning. Paul Hoffman describes those days in The Man Who Loved Only Numbers (1998), and he's plain about what kept them going: Erdős took amphetamines. That makes this a day to understand, not one to copy.
Nobody should borrow the 3 hours of sleep. What does travel is the focus: one subject, and a day arranged around it, which you can have in far fewer hours. The 1:30 AM bedtime and the meal times are our estimates, and 4:30 to 8:00 AM is left open because Hoffman doesn't say what filled it.
Goals
Who's it for
At a glance
- 3 hr sleep per night
- 115.5 hr work per week
- 3 meals per day
- 12 hr eating window
Sleep
21 hours/week3 hr per night
- Every day1:30 AM → 4:30 AM· 3 hr
No naps.
Work
115.5 hours/week16 hr 30 min a day
- Research8:00 AM → 1:00 PM· 5 hr · Every day
- Research1:30 PM → 7:00 PM· 5 hr 30 min · Every day
- Research7:30 PM → 1:30 AM· 6 hr · Every day
Eat
10.5 hours/week3 meals12:12 eating window1 hr 30 min eating
- Breakfast7:30 AM → 8:00 AM· 30 min · Every day
- Lunch1:00 PM → 1:30 PM· 30 min · Every day
- Dinner7:00 PM → 7:30 PM· 30 min · Every day
Off