The older people get, the more set in their ways they seem to get. I've seen it with my parents' and grandparents' generations, which are/were particularly rigid. Case in point, an encounter with an unnamed and unidentified individual from that era:

He strikes me as the kind of person who wouldn't have taken Sir Isaac Newton seriously, given Newton's habit to spend his first few hours upon waking sitting in his pajamas, wring down as many of the ideas in his head as he possibly could before breakfast. According to this individual, nobody will ever achieve anything of import or significance if they don't start their days by first getting dressed and breakfasted before attending to the day's business. This from a man who hasn't lived what I'd call a successful life, but never was much for the possibility that things can be done differently to how he would do them and still work ... As far as I can tell, it isn't people like him who advanced the state of the world.

"Well, if you went to bed at a reasonable hour, got eight hours' sleep and got up at a reasonable hour—"

If I did that, I'd be two hours short in which to get done all that I need to. Since I get so little done in the course of a day, anyway, I'd achieve practically nothing. I barely have enough time to get through the things I have to do, never mind the things I'd like to do (which could take me anywhere from a year to eighty, even though I'm not planning to live longer than another twenty if I can help it). I don't see how that's a solution, since the times at which I do things isn't the problem. Getting to a point in my life where I do not have to deal with stuffy old farts and their crap, however, might be.

"If they give you ruled paper, write the other way." — Juan Ramón Jiménez (December 1881 – May 1958)

Stow the bullshit; you don't fool me with it.

Thumbnail image: Photo of two bodkins, the type of needle Newton used to explore the space around his eye