Richard Strauss's Daily Routine

Richard Strauss wrote the tone poems Don Juan and Also sprach Zarathustra and the opera Der Rosenkavalier. This is a convalescent's day, described in an 1892 letter from Egypt while he was recovering and orchestrating his first opera, Guntram.

Mason Currey's Daily Rituals has him up at 8:00 AM for a bath, 3 eggs, tea and home-made jam, then a half-hour stroll by the Nile. He orchestrated from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM, then read Schopenhauer or played cards. A second hour of work ran from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM, then tea, a sunset walk and letters until 7:00 PM. After dinner he talked and smoked until bed at 10:00 PM, as Meaning Ring's notes retell it.

Adopt it if you are coming back from something and want work to sit inside a gentle day. You get 4 hours of composing in 2 sittings, 90 minutes of walking, plenty of company and a 10-hour night. Treating a rest-cure day as a standing routine, repeated all week, is our simplification.