Routines of the Dead and Famous

I am obsessed with people’s mundane routines. I am that person that consumes morning and night routines on YouTube like a crazy person. I want to know what people eat, what kind of creamer they put in their coffee, how many times they hit the snooze button, do they sleep with an eye mask? I’m a creeper. 

Luckily for me, I’m not alone, and not only that, people enjoy sharing this content, and have enjoyed discussing it for longer than we may have realized. I recently finished the book “Daily Rituals” by Mason Currey which contains the habits and daily routines of dozens of creators ranging from authors, to composers, to architects, to painters. Currey covers everyone from Mozart to Jane Austen to Charles Darwin. The one thing these people all have in common is that they can be classified as artists of some type. 

This book absolutely fascinated me because it contained all the mundane details about people that had some insane careers over the course of the last couple centuries. Although almost everyone had a very distinct routine of their own, some patterns did emerge with lessons that we can still apply to our own routines today. 

The first thing I noticed was that for the vast majority of the artists Currey covers, he focuses on their routines at their peak productivity cycle in life which usually happened between 30 and 50 years old. Sometimes people started earlier or later, but this was noticeable to me because I’m only 25, so maybe I’m not supposed to be settled in my ways yet?

Second thing to note was the amount of substance abuse present in a lot of these routines. Most of the artists covered were Western and grown before we understood the effects of things like smoking, excessive alcohol, and amphetamines. As a result, many of the people in the book experienced erratic schedules and had early deaths, whereas somebody like Charles Darwin was actually afraid of being drunk and claimed to have been tipsy only once in his life.

By far the ‘healthiest’ routine covered was that of Japanese author Haruki Murakami. He wakes at 4am, works for 5-6 hours, then eats breakfast, goes for a workout, has his lunch, and runs errands in the afternoon. He has some chill time with his wife in the evenings and then is in bed by nine. Honestly....ideal.

By contrast, someone like F. Scott Fitzgerald struggled a lot with alcoholism and really only wrote in the small spells when he wasn’t drinking or partying and published only with the extensive help of his editors. 

The range of productivity in general is wild. Some authors and composers are described as laboring over a couple sentences or measures for days at a time whereas a composer like Shostakovitch could see an entire composition in his head and put it down on paper in a matter of days with little errors. Although an impressive feat, others, like the author Franz Kafka who agonized over small sentences, still managed to produce great works whether they worked fast or slow. We have the disadvantage today of being able to seemingly compare pace of work, but these routines show that pace does not equal quality and even if you move excruciatingly slowly, you can still make something amazing. 

Although the order in which they did things varied wildly, some similar habits emerged across the board. Most of the writers described, seemed to prefer early morning writing. Composers, understandably, needed complete silence. Most everyone participated in some kind of exercise, whether it was an hour of calisthenics or long walks in the afternoon. 

And maybe most importantly, many of them struggled to create day after day. One author is described as staying in bed as long as possible to avoid his typewriter and the inevitable despair of putting words to paper.

Assuming money was not an issue, we sometimes view creative types as less hard working than those who do more traditional jobs. But this is not the case. Sitting with yourself, by yourself, day after day, trying to make sense of the world around you and translate it into a given medium can be brutal (maybe this explains the substance abuse…)

In any case - this book was instrumental in helping me with my never ending battle with comparison culture. We live in a time where it is so easy to get peeks at other people’s habits and lives and compare ourselves but in the grand scheme of things you have to figure out what routine works for YOU to produce the things you want. So if that means getting up at 4am to write - do it. But if that means agonizing over editing your videos one frame at a time over the course of a week - do it. You don’t have to subscribe to ANYONE’s habits or routines to produce something great. But you DO have to spend some time getting to know what works for you. And once you have that - don't let anyone tell you different. 

PC: Marketa Benedetti