Ursula K. Le Guin's Daily Routine

Ursula K. Le Guin wrote A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness, and won both the Hugo and Nebula awards several times. She lived most of her life in Portland, Oregon. In a 1988 interview she laid out her ideal day hour by hour, and it went viral decades later.

At 5:30 AM she woke and lay there thinking, then got up at 6:15 AM for a big breakfast. She wrote from 7:15 AM until lunch at noon, read and listened to music from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM, then did correspondence and maybe some housecleaning until 5:00 PM. From 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM she made dinner and ate it; after that, she said, she tended to be very stupid, and she went to bed at 10:00 PM. Open Culture published the list, and Austin Kleon restored the lines the viral version dropped, bedtime included.

It suits anyone who does their best work early and wants a day that ends properly: 5 clear hours of work, then an afternoon for reading and letters. It was her ideal day rather than a record, so every day of the week here is the same. Rounding to the half hour and how the afternoon and evening split are our estimates.