Nicholas Bate is an author (go here for his most recent book) , personal excellence consultant (see here) and visiting lecturer at Warwick University, UK.  I've written before that his web site should be on you daily visit list.  His thinking on the "business of life" is original and highly usable.

So when I thought about my look at daily routines, I naturally thought of Bate and he graciously agreed to share his daily routine:

"I’m generally up early, the main reason for that being the access to solitude and with solitude the ability to think. First thing will be some form of meditation followed by writing, a combination of the blog, my journal and whatever book/article I might be currently working on. The rest of the day will them depend upon whether it is dedicated to a client or it is my own/office day. The former is straightforward: they get 100% of my attention be it consulting, conference, work-shop or simple meetings The latter is split into a series of projects: I generally work in 90 minutes chunks separated by breakfast, walks or a trip to the gym/kick-boxing class or lunch..."

I asked about certain times of day as the focus of certain types of tasks:

"For me there are immersion tasks such as writing, for which I want to reserve a significant period of quality time. These I will therefore do as early in the day as possible as there is less likelihood of interruption and energy/creativity is higher. For smaller tasks e.g. e-mail, phone calls I will batch them together and do them later in the day when peak creativity might be waning."

Daily reading material and reading preferences:

"I read much of the serious UK Press online which tends also to give good international coverage. I then usually have a couple of non-fiction books on the go, reading 2/3 week. I will go though periods where I read no fiction but then suddenly discover a new author and will go through the whole of their back-catalogue.

I will read almost anything and that is the joy of a good and well-displayed bookshop: being introduced to a marvelous new read."

The value of routine:

"Routines are good for establishing that which you want to get done ‘naturally’. Brushing your teeth is a routine for most of us: we don’t have to think about it, it just happens. That is the same for my writing, for example. It is now a routine so it just happens. But there are of course many non-routine activities: a client need a urgent proposal. These I will schedule into my day.

The nature of my work is to be very much with my client and often with an audience of 500, so most of my routines are to preserve time for myself so that I can restore and re-charge and get what is important and investing done easily and effectively."