What is the place of a daily "quiet time"?

What is the place of a daily "quiet time"? Should we all set aside a regular time each day to pray? Consider two scenarios:

Simon wakes every morning at 5 am. He gets out of bed, gets a glass of water from the kitchen, then goes to the lounge room. For the next hour he reads his Bible and prays, using a Bible reading plan and a prayer diary that he carries everywhere with him. The diary contains dozens of prayer points which he works through systematically over the week. If he reads or hears of something during the day that he feels he should pray about, he writes it down in his prayer diary. He's been doing this for years.

Down the road, Cathy wakes at 5 am to the sound of the baby crying. As she stumbles out of bed, she silently prays "Lord, please give me the strength I need for today". By the time she's fed the baby, her two year old is wide awake and wanting her to play with him. For the rest of the day she's constantly busy looking after her family. As she goes about her activities, she silently prays for people and situations as they come to mind. The only time she gets to read her Bible is on Tuesday evening, when the children are asleep and her husband is out at a meeting.

Simon has the more traditional "quiet time". The benefit to Simon is that he begins each day with the Lord and his word, and that has an influence on the rest of his day. Others know that he can be relied upon to keep his word if he says "I'll pray for you." Yet Simon faces the temptation to think of himself as a better, more committed Christian because of the regular hours he spends in prayer (and the sleep he misses in order to pray). He may start to look down on those who don't pray as regularly as he does. He may also become dependent on the routine he has established rather than on God himself, and find himself rattled if anything keeps him from his morning prayer time.

Cathy has a vital, if less concentrated, prayer life. She's learning to depend on God and communicate with him moment by moment. She comes to Tuesday evening hungry to spend more time with him. The temptation she faces is to let her need for approval from other Christians lead her into feeling guilty that she doesn't have a daily quiet time. And there's always the risk that she will let her busy life become an excuse for gradually forgetting to pray and read altogether.

I don't know of any Biblical mandate for insisting that Christians have a daily "quiet time". A commitment to pray at a regular time each day is certainly a useful technique to help overcome the distractions that can keep us from ever praying. But it's not an end in itself, and carries no special merit. We're told to pray without ceasing. Each of us knows for ourselves whether or not we're praying "without ceasing", and with the right attitude towards God.