In Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis describes his time living in Great Bookham with William Kirkpatrick, a former school headmaster who tutored students preparing for university entrance exams. Lewis described “Knock” as “over six feet tall, very shabbily dressed (like a gardener, I thought), lean as a rake and immensely muscular,” with a “mustache and side whiskers.”

Before working with “The Great Knock,” as the Lewis family called Kirkpatrick, C. S. had been a middling student. After working with Knock, he got into Oxford.

He also began the process of— well, of becoming the C. S. Lewis we all know and love. Lewis flourished under Knock, not least because in addition to teaching him a great deal of Greek, Lewis was exposed to an almost Platonic ideal of the intellectual life:

We now settled into a routine which has ever since served in my mind as an archetype, so that what I still mean when I speak of a “normal” day (and lament that normal days are so rare) is a day of the Bookham pattern. For if I could please myself I would always live as I lived there. I would choose always to breakfast at exactly eight and to be at my desk by nine, there to read or write till one. If a cup of good tea or coffee could be brought me about eleven, so much the better. A step or so out of doors for a pint of beer would not do quite so well; for a man does not want to drink alone and if you meet a friend in the taproom the break is likely to be extended beyond its ten minutes.

So that’s the morning. What of the afternoon?

At one precisely lunch should be on the table; and by two at the latest I would be on the road. Not, except at rare intervals, with a friend. Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the outdoor world; and talking leads almost inevitably to smoking, and then farewell to nature as far as one of our senses is concerned. The only friend to walk with is one… who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the countryside that a glance, a halt, or at most a nudge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared. The return from the walk, and the arrival of tea, should be exactly coincident, and not later than a quarter past four. Tea should be taken in solitude, as I took it as Bookham… [for] eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.

But you’re not done.

At five a man should be at work again, and at it till seven. Then, at the evening meal and after, comes the time for talk, or, failing that, for lighter reading; and unless you are making a night of it with your cronies (and at Bookham I had none) there is no reason why you should ever be in bed later than eleven….

A 1992 article by Kernie Nix (available on JSTOR) describes “The ‘Great Knock’ Method of Teaching Reading” in greater detail.

But what’s notable about this is how much time Lewis spends apparently not doing anything: even when he’s preparing for the most important exams of his life, Lewis spends four hours at his desk in the morning, and two (probably less intensive) hours in the later afternoon. There’s an almost two-hour walk in between, as well as lunch and tea (when you relax with some lighter reading, like Boswell or Herodotus.

And he doesn’t give it up: “Such is my ideal, and such then (almost) was the reality,” he wrote, “of ‘settled, calm, Epicurean life.’”

Lewis is not unusual in regarding this as an ideal, nor was he exceptional among his peers in both living according to this schedule (or some version of it), yet turning out a huge body of work— lectures to students, talks to the general public, works on Christian apologetics, science fiction, and of course the Narnia books.

The Eagle and Child, where Lewis met with his fellow Inklings, and read from drafts of Narnia

His life suggests a tantalizing possibility: that maybe the way to be super-productive and -creative is not to treat work as a test of endurance, featuring 12-hour days and an always-on attitude. Maybe you succeed at some kinds of work by, paradoxically, not working TOO much.