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 daily schedule is where one of his best-known essays came from. Later, his writing routine fit between school drop-off and pickup.

In his early startup days he slept until about 11:00 AM and did business until dinner. After dinner he programmed in one long block until about 3:00 AM. He described the split 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.

Programmers, writers and anyone who makes things between meetings will recognize the problem it solves. It works best if you can bunch your meetings into one part of the day.

Group the meetings and give the making one long, unbroken stretch, and you get real progress instead of hours chopped into pieces. Try it with one afternoon of meetings and one clear block for the work that matters. You don't need the 3:00 AM finish. The meal times are our estimates, and the weekend repeats the weekday.