Scott Adams: Daily Routine

On Daily Routines, we profile successful leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, executives and athletes to explore the routines, schedules, habits and typical day in their life.

Scott Adams, best known for creating the satirical office comic strip Dilbert, has been an immensely prolific artist over the past 30 years — his works have been published in 2,000 newspapers worldwide in 65 countries and 25 languages. He has also produced a series of books and an animated television series based on the strip.

A bulk of Adams’ work output starts and ends in the morning hours. Being an early riser, Adams wakes up at 5am, or even earlier on some days, although getting up early to work is nothing new to him.

Years ago, I engineered my routine to concentrate my creative energy into a few hours in the morning.

During the early days, when Adams was still working at telecommunications company Pacific Bell as a budget analyst (which is also where he got his inspiration for Dilbert), he was getting up at 4am to draw his cartoons before getting for work at 7am. A few years after he got his first break, when United Media published Dilbert in 30 newspapers, he was finally able to leave his day job and work on Dilbert full-time.

After waking up, Adams first port of call is his coffee and a protein bar, “I give myself this…