Sigmund Freud's Daily Routine

Sigmund Freud founded psychoanalysis and wrote The Interpretation of Dreams. He did his own writing at the end of days spent almost entirely with patients.

Mason Currey's Daily Rituals has him up at 7:00 AM for breakfast and a beard trim, then seeing patients from 8:00 AM until noon. Dinner came promptly at 1:00 PM in silence, then a fast walk round the Ringstrasse, buying cigars. More patients followed from 3:00 PM to 9:00 PM, then supper and cards, and from 10:30 PM he read, wrote and edited until 1:00 AM, as Meaning Ring's notes on the book retell it.

Adopt this if your days belong to clients or an employer and your own work lives at the edges. You get a hard stop for a fast walk in the middle of the day and two and a half protected hours at night. The day repeats all week, the chart counts the afternoon patients as creative work, and the three-month summer holidays that made it bearable are left out.