And it also is very reassuring to see how dysfunctional how many of them are . . . depressing in some cases. Great book. I actually produced the audiobook for people who want to try the audio.
. . .
Mason Curry. Great book.
BJ Novak: I'm demoralized by how great people start their day very early.
Were you also encouraged or demoralized by how many of them were drug addicts?
BJ Novak: That was encouraging.
It was 90 percent use methamphetamines
via #121: BJ Novak of The Office on Creative Process, Handling Rejection, and Good Comedy
I’m endlessly fascinated by routines and rituals.
What do the most successful people do first thing in the morning? Or last thing at night? How do writers, artists, and creatives engineer “inspiration” when it eludes them? Naps? Drugs? Exercise? Weird sexual habits or eating regimens? Other?
The answers can help you.
For my birthday last year, I received a incredible book: Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. It was given to me by Josh Waitzkin, the renowned chess champion (best known from Searching for Bobby Fischer) and a master at deconstructing the world’s top performers.
He loved the book, and I fell head over heels in love with it.
It became my daily companion. There were gems everywhere, and I underlined nearly every page. I began to read 1-2 page-long profiles each morning with my pu-erh tea, and this ritual not only shocked me out of a major depressive funk, it also triggered a creative explosion.
I was having fun again… and getting tons done in the process!
Lena Dunham, creator of Girls, agrees: “I just can’t recommend this book [Daily Rituals] enough.”
Daily Rituals details nearly 200 routines of some of the greatest minds of the last four hundred years–famous novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians. Among other things, this book will make you feel better about your own procrastination and odd habits! These A-players were a very peculiar bunch…
This post includes:
A full overview of Daily Rituals
A sample of Daily Rituals (Introduction)
The brand-new audiobook of Daily Rituals includes exclusive bonus material — introductions for each of the 161 creative minds. This makes each routine easier to place in context and use.
You can download it all here.
And, just as Josh gifted this book to me, I hope you consider gifting Daily Rituals to your family and friends this holiday season. It could change their lives.
More than 150 inspired—and inspiring—novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians on how they subtly maneuver the many (self-inflicted) obstacles and (self-imposed) daily rituals to get done the work they love to do.
Franz Kafka, frustrated with his living quarters and day job, wrote in a letter to Felice Bauer in 1912, “time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.”
Kafka is one of 161 minds who describe their daily rituals to get their work done, whether by waking early or staying up late; whether by self-medicating with doughnuts or bathing, drinking vast quantities of coffee, or taking long daily walks. Thomas Wolfe wrote standing up in the kitchen, the top of the refrigerator as his desk, dreamily fondling his “male configurations”.... Jean-Paul Sartre chewed on Corydrane tablets (a mix of amphetamine and aspirin), ingesting ten times the recommended dose each day ... Descartes liked to linger in bed, his mind wandering in sleep through woods, gardens, and enchanted palaces where he experienced “every pleasure imaginable.”
Here are: Anthony Trollope, who demanded of himself that each morning he write three thousand words (250 words every fifteen minutes for three hours) before going off to his job at the postal service, which he kept for thirty-three years during the writing of more than two dozen books ... Karl Marx ... Woody Allen ... Agatha Christie ... George Balanchine, who did most of his work while ironing ... Leo Tolstoy ... Charles Dickens ... Pablo Picasso ... George Gershwin, who, said his brother Ira, worked for twelve hours a day from late morning to midnight, composing at the piano in pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers....
Here also are the daily rituals of Charles Darwin, Andy Warhol, John Updike, Twyla Tharp, Benjamin Franklin, William Faulkner, Jane Austen, Anne Rice, and Igor Stravinsky (he was never able to compose unless he was sure no one could hear him and, when blocked, stood on his head to “clear the brain”).
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