Deep work
Weeks built for focus: long deep work blocks, meetings herded into the rest of the day, and time blocking that survives contact with a calendar.
Filter by
40 frameworks
Arthur C. Brooks's Daily Routine
Do your best work before lunch. Arthur C. Brooks's morning routine fits the gym, Mass and 4 hours of writing in before noon.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Ali Abdaal's Daily Routine
Protect your mornings and share your meals. Ali Abdaal's daily routine puts 4 hours of deep work before a 2-hour lunch.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Michael Sliwinski's Weekly Routine
Give every weekday one job and guard 2 hours of it. Michael Sliwinski runs Nozbe from home with a theme for each day and deep work at 11:00 AM.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Gene's Power Schedule
For those ready to do meaningful deep work, focus on one project, stay fit, and make time for family.
Gene KamenezUpdated
Barack Obama's Daily Routine
Keep a few quiet hours for your hardest thinking. Barack Obama's daily routine: family dinner at 6:30 PM, then 4 to 5 hours alone.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Hayao Miyazaki's Daily Routine
Decide your start time once and never again. Hayao Miyazaki's daily routine in 2013: at the studio at 11:00 AM sharp, six days a week.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Kazuo Ishiguro's Daily Routine
Finish a first draft by clearing a month. Kazuo Ishiguro wrote most of The Remains of the Day in a 4-week sprint called the Crash.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Mahatma Gandhi's Daily Routine
For anyone whose day fills up before their own work starts. Mahatma Gandhi's writing routine began at 4:00 AM, with silence every Monday.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Simone de Beauvoir's Daily Routine
Work 7 hours a day and still see your friends. Simone de Beauvoir's writing routine: two shifts with a long social break between.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Winston Churchill's Daily Routine
Get two working days out of one, with a nap in the middle. Winston Churchill's daily routine: sleep from 3:00 PM, then work after dinner.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Kurt Vonnegut's Daily Routine
Get your 4 hours of writing in before lunch, not after work. Kurt Vonnegut's writing routine in 1965 started at 5:30 AM.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Albert Einstein's Daily Routine
For productive days with no breathing room. Albert Einstein's daily routine at Princeton: a walk to work at 10:30 AM, then a lunch nap.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Alexander Graham Bell's Daily Routine
End the day on a question, not an answer. Alexander Graham Bell's daily routine: night work from 9:30 PM, then a problem set in his mind before sleep.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Andrej Karpathy's Daily Routine
For builders who could keep going all night. Andrej Karpathy works from about 9:00 AM, Monday to Friday, and keeps weekends off.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Cal Newport's Daily Routine
For anyone who ends the day busy but behind. Cal Newport plans every minute of his workday and stops at 5:30 PM.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Demis Hassabis's Daily Routine
Have dinner at home and still get quiet hours for hard problems. Demis Hassabis's daily routine: a second workday starting at 10:00 PM.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Isaac Newton's Daily Routine
Hold one hard problem in mind as long as it takes. Isaac Newton's daily routine was almost all work, plus 6 weeks at the furnace twice a year.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Lex Fridman's Daily Routine
Put hard thinking first and exercise in the middle. Lex Fridman's daily routine runs in a fixed order, with two 4-hour deep work blocks.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Nikola Tesla's Daily Routine
For long working days that need one fixed point. Nikola Tesla dined at 8:00 PM sharp in 1896, with a stack of 18 napkins.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Paul Erdős's Daily Routine
Give one subject your best 3 hours. Paul Erdős's daily routine was built around mathematics, with some 1,500 papers to show for it.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Paul Graham's Daily Routine
Group your meetings and give the making one long stretch. Paul Graham's 2009 essay on the maker's schedule came from a day split at dinner.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Thomas Edison's Daily Routine
Keep learning after a full day's work. Thomas Edison's daily routine in 1901: a day at the lab, then 4 evening hours of study.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Charles Darwin's Daily Routine
Get great work out of about 3 hours a day. Charles Darwin's daily routine: two focused sittings from 8:00 AM, with walks and a nap.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Charles Dickens's Daily Routine
Think the story over on foot. Charles Dickens's writing routine: 2,000 words by 2:00 PM, then a three-hour walk.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Flannery O'Connor's Daily Routine
Make 3 focused hours a day enough. Flannery O'Connor's writing routine started at 9:00 AM and left the afternoon for rest and her peacocks.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Franz Kafka's Daily Routine
For anyone writing around a full-time job. Franz Kafka's writing routine: a long sleep after work, then writing from 11:00 PM.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Gustave Flaubert's Daily Routine
Keep life orderly so the work can be bold. Gustave Flaubert woke at 10:00 AM and wrote at a round table, afternoon and night.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Haruki Murakami's Daily Routine
Finish the big project by repeating one day. Haruki Murakami's writing routine: up at 4:00 AM, the same day for 6 months to a year.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Honoré de Balzac's Daily Routine
Write in the quiet while everyone else sleeps. Honoré de Balzac's writing routine began at 1:00 AM and produced some 90 novels, stories and essays.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Immanuel Kant's Daily Routine
Guard an hour of thinking before the workday starts. Immanuel Kant's daily routine: wake at 5:00 AM, think and write, then lecture all morning.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
John Milton's Daily Routine
For minds that compose best before dawn. Blind, John Milton built Paradise Lost in his head from 4:00 AM, then dictated it to an aide.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Ludwig van Beethoven's Daily Routine
Finish your creative work before mid-afternoon. Ludwig van Beethoven's daily routine: 60 beans to every cup of coffee, then composing until 2:30 PM.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Maya Angelou's Daily Routine
Write somewhere that isn't home. Maya Angelou's writing routine: a bare hotel room by 7:00 AM, with a dictionary, a Bible and a deck of cards.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Pablo Picasso's Daily Routine
Work with a night owl's clock, not against it. Pablo Picasso shut himself in his studio from 2:00 PM and painted on into the small hours.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Sigmund Freud's Daily Routine
For people whose days belong to other people. Sigmund Freud's daily routine saved his own writing for after 10:30 PM.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Thomas Mann's Daily Routine
For anyone whose best thinking comes before the inbox. Thomas Mann's writing routine: 3 hours behind a closed door from 9:00 AM.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Vladimir Nabokov's Daily Routine
Spread your writing across a long, unhurried day. Vladimir Nabokov's writing routine: 3 blocks, 2 walks and Scrabble in Cyrillic.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
Voltaire's Daily Routine
Get words down by talking, not typing. Voltaire's writing routine: dictating to a secretary from bed and not dressing until noon.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
W.H. Auden's Daily Routine
For early thinkers who want a hard stop. W.H. Auden's writing routine gave his sharpest morning hours to work and ended at 6:30 PM sharp.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated
William Styron's Daily Routine
For people whose minds wake late. William Styron's writing routine: 4 hours from 4:00 PM, until 200 or 300 words were done.
AgendoloVerifiedUpdated