Daily rituals.

I recently finished the book ‘Daily Rituals – How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration, and Get to Work’ by Mason Currey and really, really liked it.

I find peoples routines and habits absolutely fascinating. I believe a lot of why people are successful can be rooted back to their routines and habits and there’s so much to learn from that.

The book presents the routines and working habits of 161 creative minds – among them, novelists, poets, playwrights, composers, painters, philosophers, and scientists.

Woody Allen relied on hot showers throughout the day to help him get out of a rut.

Charles Dickens would go on daily, vigorous 3 hour walks to inspire his creativity.

Stephen King found he was able to be incredibly productive by committing to writing 2,000 words a day – after which he was done for the day.

Louis Armstrong had elaborate pre and post-show rituals to help manage the stress and boredom of travelling from gig to gig and continually staying in hotels.

Interestingly, the variation in habits and routines between them was big. Some were early risers – others worked late into the evening. Some didn’t touch any alcohol or coffee – others relied on them aswell as drugs heavily. Some were workaholics – others only worked for a few hours a day. Some had families – others opted to be alone. And in fact, many adapted and changed their routines throughout their lifetime.

This book was a great reminder to me on how important routines and habits are. Despite the variation in their routines and habits, it’s clear that many of the best creative geniuses figured out what worked for them and were then incredibly self disciplined in repeating these habits and routines throughout their life to produce their best work.

I took a lot of notes as I was reading this book so I have shared my unformatted notes below. I highly recommend you buy and read Daily Rituals for yourself though to get the full learnings.

Daily Rituals Notes:

• Lots of blocks of concentration – often in solitude. Most common was 1-2 focused sessions of 2-3 hours per day

• Some great writers preferred to work regular day jobs and would write in the evenings – they seemed to find this structure helped them

• Lots of long walks

• Lots of solitary

• Getting up early was very common

• Not as many workaholics as you might expect. Many found their peak concentration time and focused on one thing for 3-4 hours a day only

• Lots of downtime, relaxing, socialising etc. Many ring-fenced time for this specifically and entirely blocked out work during this time

• Many followed the same routine for their entire life – seemed to be the cornerstone to being creative and productive

• Daily consistency counts – many writers had word / time targets for the day and often they weren’t as big as you would imagine (500 words or 3 hours etc.). However these small steps done consistently counted for some huge libraries of work over a lifetime

• Some took 2-3 month re-charges. Great quote from Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung – ‘I’ve realised that somebody who’s tired and needs a rest, and goes on working all the same is a fool’

• Many found that concentrating on their work to not be that enjoyable, in fact it was torturous for some. Many displayed a huge amount of determination and self discipline to consistently push through that discomfort on a daily basis.

• Lots of eating the same meals to take the thinking out of eating.

• Lots of delegating admin to others.

• Lots of tea drinking – but also lots of abusing alcohol/ drugs – take what you want from that

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