Simone de Beauvoir's Daily Routine

Simone de Beauvoir was a French philosopher and novelist whose book The Second Sex (1949) became a founding text of modern feminism. Her novel The Mandarins won the Prix Goncourt in 1954. Her writing routine was two shifts of work with a long social break in the middle, and she kept to it every day.

She told The Paris Review in 1965 that she had tea first, got under way at about 10:00 AM and worked until 1:00 PM. Then she saw her friends, went back to work at 5:00 PM, and picking up the thread again was no trouble. Her studio in Montparnasse was a 5-minute walk from the apartment of Jean-Paul Sartre, her lifelong companion. The Marginalian collects her lines on the routine; she worked every day except for 2 or 3 months of travel a year.

It's for anyone who works best in two shifts and doesn't want to give up their people for it. If one long stretch wears you out, a truly free midday break may be what's missing.

You get 7 hours of work and 4 free hours in the middle of the day. Try it by fixing one plan with a friend for the middle of tomorrow and keeping a protected block on either side of it. Her wake time, meals, the late evening and bedtime are our estimates.