Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Daily Routine

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completed more than 800 works, Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute among them, before he died at 35. In 1782 Vienna he was also earning a living, and composing had to fit around it.

His letter to his sister that year, which Mason Currey's Daily Rituals quotes and The Marginalian retells, has him dressed by 7:00 AM and composing until 9:00 AM. He taught from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM, then lunched. From 5:00 PM he composed when a concert didn't claim the evening, visited his fiancée, Constanze, until about 11:00 PM, then composed again until 1:00 AM.

This is the day for anyone building something of their own around a job that pays the bills. You get three chances a day to move the work on: before work, in the evening and late at night. Keep the split and give yourself more than his five hours of sleep. The four-hour lunch fills a gap the letter leaves open, and the evening block counts concerts as composing.