Robert William Shields (May 17, 1918 – October 15, 2007) was an American minister and high school English teacher best known for writing a diary of 37.5 million words, which chronicled every five minutes of his life from 1972 until a stroke disabled him in 1997.
[3] Believing that discontinuing his diary would be like "turning off my life",[1] he spent four hours a day in the office, on his back porch, in his underwear, recording his body temperature, blood pressure, medications, describing his urination and bowel movements, and slept for only two hours at a time so he could describe his dreams.
The New York Times summarized the journal as being about anything "from changing light bulbs to pondering God to visiting the bathroom".
[8] However, many excerpts have appeared, including the following:[4][9] Shields was married to Grace Augusta Hotson, with whom he had three daughters: Klara, Cornelia, and Heidi.
He died from a heart attack at his home in Dayton, Washington, on October 15, 2007, just over 10 years after the stroke that ended his work on his diary.