Harvard’s B.F. Skinner is one of the most influential psychologists of all time. As the founder of behavioral psychology, it’s hard to find a corner of modern life his insights haven’t touched. I was fascinated to discover his strict working habits. They reveal not only how he became such a prodigious writer, but also how he became such an inventive researcher:

Over the course of his career, he learned to protect an uninterrupted block of time for writing from 5:00am to 7:00am. He also kept fastidious records of his daily output: “As I sit down I turn on a special desk light. This starts a clock, which totalizes my time at my desk. Every 12 hours recorded on it, I plot a point on a cumulative curve, the slope of which shows my overall productivity.” Thus reads a 1963 journal entry where he documented his daily routine for posterity.

It’s all pretty fascinating (reading a couple of pages of Contemporary American Usage every day!?!), but I was struck by this passage in particular:

“I usually wake up for an hour or so during the night. I have a clipboard, paper pad and pencil (with a small flashlight attached to the board) for making notes at night. I am not an insomniac. I enjoy the nightly hour and make good use of it.”

I loved that — “I make good use of the nightly hour.” It struck me how many inventive ideas must have been documented in this hypnogogic state, and how well they must have been capitalized upon the following morning, for this to have become a regular ritual that he enforced the rest of his life.

As Mason Currey describes in his delightful Daily Rituals, “By the time Skinner retired from his Harvard teaching post in 1974, that nightly hour of sleeplessness had become an integral part of his routine. His timer now rang four times a day: at midnight, 1:00 AM, 5:00 AM, and 7:00 AM, for one hour of nocturnal composition in addition to his usual two hours at dawn. He followed this routine seven days a week, holidays included, until only a few days before his death in 1990.”

Talk about commitment! He clearly derived immense value from the night watch.

Related: Set An Output Commitment
Related: Take a Nano-Nap
Related: Take a Micro-Nap

Join over 11,147 creators & leaders who read Paint & Pipette each week