Paul Graham's Daily Routine

Paul Graham co-founded Viaweb, which Yahoo bought in 1998 and turned into Yahoo Store, and in 2005 co-founded the startup accelerator Y Combinator. He is also an essayist, and his early day is where one of his best-known essays came from.

In his early startup days he slept until about 11:00 AM and did business until dinner. After dinner he programmed until about 3:00 AM, in one long block. He described the day in his 2009 essay "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule": business took the daylight on the manager's schedule, and programming took the night on the maker's. Later he wrote between school drop-off and pickup, but that version has no times.

Programmers, writers and anyone who makes things between meetings will recognize the problem it solves. Group the meetings and give the making one long, unbroken stretch, and you get real progress instead of hours chopped into pieces. You don't need the 3:00 AM finish to do it. The meal times are our estimates, and the weekend repeats the weekday.