A reading habit with a long history
In answers republished on his own site on January 1, 2015, Austin Kleon described heading to bed around 9 p.m. and reading for about an hour. His young son shaped the mornings. A planned limit on screen time was less settled: the same page says he had already broken his resolution to avoid screens before 10 a.m. and after 10 p.m.
Who is Austin Kleon?
Austin Kleon is a writer and artist whose illustrated books about creativity include Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work!, and Keep Going. He also created Newspaper Blackout, a collection of poems made by removing words from newspaper articles to form new pieces of writing.
That early account matters because it separates a familiar evening activity from an aspiration. Reading was something Kleon reported doing; the screen cutoff was a rule he reported failing to keep.
The phone stays in the kitchen
In a December 16, 2024 post, Kleon described leaving his phone charging on the kitchen counter when he went to bed, then reading until he fell asleep. In the morning, breakfast, coffee and three diary pages came before picking up the phone.
His June 4, 2026 answers to A Reading Life add a division between kinds of reading: nonfiction in print, with a pencil, during the morning or afternoon; fiction on an e-reader before bed. He again described leaving the phone in the kitchen. For much of the preceding winter, his evening choice had been a Sherlock Holmes story.
Different dates, different details
These accounts show how Kleon described making room for reading at the edges of his day. They do not establish when the phone habit began, whether it happened without exceptions, or whether the 2015 bedtime still applied in 2026. An e-reader is part of the later account; calling the routine entirely screen-free would misdescribe it.
A separate note on daytime rest
Kleon also wrote about naps in an October 13, 2017 post. Among quotations from other artists, he identified his own preference: coffee followed by lying down for fifteen minutes, with a notebook nearby. He linked that idea to a page in The Steal Like an Artist Journal.
The post also expressed enthusiasm for another writer’s description of napping. That passage is Philip Roth’s account, so its swimming, lunch and newspaper sequence should not be reassigned to Kleon. The distinction keeps the source’s collage of voices from turning into a made-up daily schedule.
The page says the subject later became a chapter in Keep Going and discloses Amazon affiliate participation. It supplies a daytime-rest anecdote alongside the separate bedtime-reading accounts, not a recommendation to use caffeine for sleep or evidence of a recurring nap schedule.
Kleon’s site promotes his books and newsletter and discloses Amazon affiliate participation. The 2026 questionnaire accompanied a new book release and includes book-shopping links. This profile reports his personal descriptions, without treating reading or phone placement as a sleep treatment. Sources checked November 7, 2026; no endorsement or clinical review is implied.