Ursula K. Le Guin's Daily Routine

Ursula K. Le Guin wrote A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness, and won the Hugo and Nebula awards. Her writing routine gives the mornings to the work and the evening to nothing at all. In a 1988 interview she laid out her ideal day, and it went viral decades later.

She woke early and lay there thinking, then got up for a big breakfast and wrote from 7:15 AM until lunch at noon. The afternoon went to reading, music, correspondence and maybe some housecleaning. In the evening 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 bedtime the viral version dropped.

It suits anyone who does their best work early and wants a day that ends properly. If you try to write after work and find nothing left, this puts the work where your head is clearest.

You get 5 clear hours of work, an afternoon for reading and letters, and an evening with no demands. Try the shape for one weekend: the morning for the one thing that matters, messages only after lunch. It was her ideal day rather than a record, so all seven days here are the same. Rounding to the half hour and how the afternoon and evening split are our estimates.