David Lynch's Extremely Reliable Daily Routine

In his work, David Lynch plundered the depths of the bizarre, trawling the underbelly of the American psyche and translating it into dreamlike and disorienting cinema and television. But in his daily life, he made sure his days were as predictable as possible.The filmmaker behind masterpieces like Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive relied on daily routines, which allowed his limitless creativity to wander far beyond the edges of what most people could dream up. “If you have a habit pattern,” Lynch told The New Yorker in 2021, “the more conscious part of your mind can concentrate on your work, and you can get ideas and do those things, and the rest sort of takes care of itself in the background.”David Lynch’s morning ritual: coffee and meditationDavid Lynch meditating | Slaven Vlasic/GettyImagesLynch’s days always began with one thing: coffee. Like Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, Lynch shared an unshakable love for the stuff, and typically started his days with a cappuccino. “I like to get going with the coffee right away. That’s just the way it is with me,” he shared with Vice in 2020. “You know how in a hospital they put an IV in your arm? I pretty much have a drip going all day long.” After his first cup of joe, he would sit for meditation—a non-negotiable cornerstone of the filmmaker’s life for decades. Lynch began practicing Transcendental Meditation in 1973 and continued to do so daily until his death in 2025, claiming to have never missed a session. The practice involves sitting for 20 minutes twice a day and mentally reciting a mantra, which is provided by a certified teacher at an official Transcendental Meditation course and kept secret for life.Lynch was a major advocate for the technique, which he often said was key to his happiness and creativity. The practice inspired his book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, and in 2005, he established the David Lynch Foundation, which aimed to spread Transcendental Meditation around the world. After Lynch finished his morning meditation, he’d head to work. That could look quite different each day, depending on whether he was searching for new ideas, filming on set, promoting a film, or something else. Still, no matter what, and even on set, he always made time for his afternoon meditation session.David Lynch’s eating habitsDavid Lynch portrait in theater | Gilles Mingasson/GettyImagesLynch preferred to eat the same meals many times in a row, and sometimes stuck with one dish for months at a time. After meditating, he would typically have a small breakfast—“either some amrit nectar or a small smoothie with protein powder and blueberries and peaches,” he once shared. In a 1997 interview with Marie Claire, he said that at the time, his favored lunch meal consisted of tomatoes, tuna, feta cheese, and olive oil. For dinner, he cited a preference for chicken and broccoli with soy sauce.Some food habits endured longer than others. His longest-lasting daily meal, he said, was a Bob’s Big Boy chocolate milkshake, which he had at 2:30 p.m. every day for seven years. He also aimed to eat at the same times every single day, no matter what.Lynch preferred not to cook at home, however. “I don't allow cooking in my house. The smell. The smell of cooking—when you have drawings, or even writings— that smell would go all over my work,” he said in a 1990 interview with Time. “So I eat things that you don't have to light a fire for. Or else I order a pizza. The speed at which I eat it, it doesn't smell up the place too bad. The smell doesn't last too long.”For the filmmaker, routine was the foundation that allowed his creativity to fly as freely as it did. “When there’s some sort of order there, then you’re free to mentally go off any place,” he said in a 2000 interview with the journalist Charlie Rose. “You’ve got a safe sort of foundation and a place to spring off from. It is very important for me [in the creative process]…The purer the environment, the more fantastic the interior world can be, it seems to me.”