Daily Routines of Brilliant Minds, From Darwin to Einstein

From Marx To Einstein: How Did Brilliant Minds Spend Their Everyday Lives?

Great work rarely comes from great bursts of inspiration alone. Look at how famous scientists, writers and composers actually spent their days and a pattern appears: a protected block of focused work, usually in the morning, plenty of walking, regular meals and, for many, a surprising amount of idleness. Einstein napped after lunch, Darwin walked the same path several times a day, and Beethoven counted his coffee beans.

Most of what we know about these habits was gathered by the American writer Mason Currey. In July 2007, while procrastinating on an article for the magazine where he worked, he began collecting accounts of how artists and thinkers organised their days. The collection became a blog and then the 2013 book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, with short portraits of more than 160 creative people. A few years later Currey followed it with Daily Rituals: Women at Work.

Below, we look closely at five famous days, then walk through a set of clock charts that turn sixteen more routines into pictures. At the end are the patterns they share and a few ideas you can borrow.

The chart behind the routines

The poster at the top, called Creative Routines, was designed by RJ Andrews of the data-design project Info We Trust, using Currey's book as the source. Each person's day is drawn as a ring.

The legend explains how to read every chart. Midnight sits at the top and noon at the bottom, so the ring runs like a 24-hour clock. Colours mark the type of activity: dark green for primary creative work, light green for other work, orange for meals and socialising, blue for exercise, grey for the jobs that paid the bills, and white for sleep. Seen together, the rings make it easy to compare a novelist with a philosopher at a glance.

Five famous days up close

Albert Einstein

Einstein moved to the United States in October 1933 and joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, which is a separate research institute rather than part of Princeton University. He stayed connected to it until his death in 1955. His days were plain: a late breakfast over the newspapers, the walk or bus ride to his office by mid-morning, home for lunch around one, then a nap, a cup of tea, and an afternoon of work and correspondence at home before dinner.

Locals soon grew used to the famous physicist with the untamed hair. He reportedly stopped going to the barber to save time and gave up socks because they only got holes. Strangers often stopped him on his walks for a photograph, and he usually obliged with good humour.

Alexander Graham Bell

As a young inventor Bell was a night owl who worked late and slept little. After he married Mabel Gardiner Hubbard in 1877, she encouraged a more regular life, with breakfast at a set time and evenings kept for rest. Mabel, who had been deaf since a childhood illness and was once his pupil, became his most important adviser and pushed him to show the telephone at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.

Bell did not always keep to the gentler timetable. When a new idea gripped him, he is said to have worked through the night, sometimes for most of a day without sleep. The tension between deep focus and family life will sound familiar to many readers.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Beethoven rose at dawn and started work almost at once. Breakfast was coffee, which he made himself with exactly sixty beans per cup, often counting them one by one. He composed until early afternoon, then went for a long walk, typically with a pencil and music paper in his pocket in case an idea arrived.

His chart shows the rest of the day: a stop at a tavern to read the papers, a simple supper with wine, a glass of beer and a pipe, and an early night around ten. His secretary Anton Schindler left a comic description of the composer pouring jugs of water over his hands while humming scales, soaking the floor so badly that landlords complained. Historians treat Schindler's stories with some caution, since he is known to have falsified parts of Beethoven's conversation books, but this one fits other accounts of a distracted, absorbed man.

Karl Marx

Marx came to London as a political exile in 1849, expecting to stay a few months. He lived there for the rest of his life. In his 1939 biography, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin described Marx's routine as long days in the British Museum reading room, from opening at nine until it closed in the evening, followed by more work at night.

The cost was high. Heavy smoking, poverty and overwork left him with recurring liver trouble, painful boils and eye inflammation. In an 1858 letter he joked: "I am plagued like Job, though not so God-fearing."

Arthur Miller

The playwright behind Death of a Salesman and The Crucible admitted that his routine was hardly a routine at all. In a 1999 interview he reportedly said he wished he had a normal writing schedule; in practice he went to his studio each morning, wrote, and then tore up most of what he had produced. It is a reassuring reminder that a steady habit of showing up matters more than a steady output.

Scientists and philosophers on the clock

Charles Darwin

This ring covers about 1842 to 1859, when Darwin was quietly developing his theory of evolution at Down House in Kent before publishing On the Origin of Species in 1859. Work came in short, focused sessions of around ninety minutes, broken by walks, often with his fox terrier Polly, by letter writing and by a nap. Evenings brought backgammon with his wife Emma and novels read aloud. Even lying awake at night, he was turning problems over.

Immanuel Kant

The philosopher from Königsberg was famous for regularity. Early in the morning he had weak tea and a pipe while meditating on the day, then wrote and lectured; he taught at the university for decades. His one proper meal was a long lunch with company, followed by his daily walk and an evening visit to his friend Joseph Green. A popular story says neighbours set their clocks by his walk, though that is probably an exaggeration.

Sigmund Freud

Around 1910 Freud saw patients from morning to early evening, with lunch and a brisk walk around Vienna's Ringstrasse, which he took at notably high speed. Evenings went on writing, reading and card games. He smoked as many as twenty cigars a day, a habit he kept even after he developed cancer of the jaw in 1923.

Benjamin Franklin

Franklin's ring comes from the schedule he set out in his autobiography, begun in 1771. Each day opened with a question, "What good shall I do this day?", and closed with another, "What good have I done to-day?" Between them came work in two blocks, a midday break to read or check accounts, and evenings for music, conversation and putting things in order.

How writers organised their days

Gustave Flaubert

While writing Madame Bovary between about 1851 and 1856, Flaubert lived with his mother at Croisset near Rouen. He slept late, then eased into the day with mail, newspapers and a hot bath, gave a lesson to his niece, and worked mostly in the evening and well past midnight. Progress was slow: he sometimes spent days on a single page.

Maya Angelou

Angelou famously wrote away from home. Around 1983 she kept a simple hotel or motel room just for writing, arriving early in the morning and working until early afternoon. Back home she showered, cooked dinner and read the day's pages to her husband, then reread and revised her work in the evening.

John Milton

By his mid-forties Milton was completely blind, so he composed in his head. Around 1660 he woke early, listened to the Bible read aloud, then memorised lines of verse and waited for an aide to take them down. Afternoons brought walks in his garden and reading by assistants. Paradise Lost, published in 1667, was written this way.

Honoré de Balzac

Balzac lived in bursts that the chart calls "orgies of work". He went to bed early in the evening, rose around midnight and wrote for many hours fuelled by strong black coffee, reportedly up to fifty cups a day. A short nap, a bath and visitors filled the gap before he returned to work. He produced dozens of novels this way and died at 51.

Victor Hugo

After Napoleon III seized power in 1851, Hugo went into exile in the Channel Islands. His days began with a cannon shot from a nearby fort, freshly brewed coffee and a morning letter from his companion Juliette Drouet. He wrote standing at a desk until about midday, then took a cold bath outdoors, exercised on the beach and visited the barber, with evenings of dinner, cards and conversation.

W. H. Auden

Auden was obsessively punctual, but his routine leaned on what the chart calls "the chemical life". He used the stimulant Benzedrine to work through the morning and afternoon, drank strong martinis with guests at dinner, and took the sedative Seconal to sleep. It is a striking example of discipline coexisting with habits few doctors would recommend.

Charles Dickens

In the 1850s Dickens wrote in absolute quiet from mid-morning to early afternoon, aiming at a set number of pages. Then he set out on long, fast walks through London or the countryside, often for around three hours, which he believed were essential for his writing. Evenings were for friends and family.

Thomas Mann

Around 1943, during his years in exile in California, Mann protected his mornings fiercely: writing from about nine until noon, with a cigar or cigarettes. Afternoons brought lunch, reading, a nap and letters; evenings were for family, guests, reading aloud and gramophone records.

Composers and an architect

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

In Vienna around 1781, newly independent and short of money, Mozart filled his days with pupils, concerts and visits to Constanze Weber, whom he married the following year. Composing was squeezed into the margins, early in the morning and late at night. He told his father in a letter that he often wrote until one in the morning and was up again at six.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

In his later years Tchaikovsky divided the day into composing in the morning, a long solitary walk after lunch and more work in the late afternoon. He reportedly believed that cutting his two-hour walk short would make him ill. Evenings were spent with guests, reading or playing cards.

Le Corbusier

The Swiss-French architect began with calisthenics, then coffee and breakfast with his wife. Mornings at home were for painting, drawing and writing; afternoons were for his architectural office, where his staff developed the ideas he had sketched earlier in the day.

What these routines have in common

A protected block of deep work. Almost everyone guarded three or four hours for their main task, most often in the morning.
Walking. Darwin, Beethoven, Kant, Dickens, Tchaikovsky and Freud all built long walks into their day. Modern research suggests walking can help with certain kinds of creative thinking, which these figures seem to have discovered for themselves.
Limits. Many worked fewer focused hours than we might expect, then stopped and did something else.
Company and play. Backgammon, cards, music and conversation appear again and again.
Costs. Not every habit deserves copying. Balzac's coffee, Auden's pills, Freud's cigars and Marx's smoking all took a toll.

Borrowing from the masters

There is no single routine of genius. Kant kept clockwork habits; Balzac lived in frantic bursts; Miller threw away most of what he wrote. The lesson is less "get up at five" and more "find the hours when your mind works best and defend them". A few practical ideas:

Notice when you concentrate most easily for a week, then put your most important work there.
Keep that block free of email, meetings and phone checks.
Add a daily walk, especially when you are stuck.
Decide in advance when work ends.
Borrow Franklin's two questions to start and close the day.

How does your own day look against these rings? Drawing your typical 24 hours as a circle, the way Andrews did, can be a surprisingly honest exercise.

Sources: Mason Currey, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (Knopf, 2013), see masoncurrey.com; Creative Routines poster by RJ Andrews, Info We Trust; Wikipedia: Albert Einstein; Wikipedia: Mabel Gardiner Hubbard; Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx: His Life and Environment (1939).

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