Famous writers and masterminds created their own daily routine, balanced between work and leisure, to find sources of inspiration.
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A daily routine is something we all have to follow in order to manage daily chores and work more or less effectively. The basis of everyday life is habits and rites, which we can borrow from others or invent some ourselves. Great writers coped with the same difficulties that we are dealing with today, no matter how brilliant they were.
In today’s post, we would like to expand on how to find the strength to write daily, how to keep a balance between work and leisure and how to manage time effectively. In addition, you might want to see this post and learn how to study more effectively.
1. SLEEP
During life, a person invents their own effective time management strategies. These strategies can be infinitely diverse: a thing that works for one person will not work for the other. Gustave Flaubert, for example, could only write at night, as during the day, he would get distracted from work by the slightest noise. Günther Grass replied to this that it’s impossible to write at night. Although you might have some inspiration at that time, when you read your text in the morning, it will be no good. Therefore, he only started to work in daylight to stay time effective.
Modern American writer Nicholson Baker has come up with time management techniques to accommodate two whole mornings in one day. His usual day begins with the fact that he wakes up at four or half past four AM. He writes something, while sometimes drinking coffee. He writes for about an hour and a half, and then, he goes back to sleep waking up around half past eight.
Interestingly, many creative people experienced problems with sleep. For example, William James was forced to lull himself with chloroform for a quite some time, while Franz Liszt walked restlessly around the room at night and tried to compose music. Charles Darwin would meditate on some scientific problem for a long time even when he was lying in bed at night already. So much for effective time management.
Some found the traditional sleep regime uncomfortable or not effective enough when tasked with the “how to plan your day” question. American architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller came up with an effective planning scheme for “high-frequency” sleep: he fell asleep for a short time during the day, feeling tired, and then again returned to work. As his biographer J. Baldwin notes, Fuller “frightened the observers, plunging into sleep for a few moments, as if he was pushing the switch button in his head. It happened so quickly that it seemed more like a fit. ”
In contrast, Renee Descartes used a time planner and slept every day for ten to eleven hours and allowed himself to wander through the woods, orchards and bewitched castles, where he tasted “all imaginable joys.” Some relaxation and idleness, in his opinion, is necessary for a good work of the mind.
2. FOOD
Many writers, artists and thinkers preferred lean and light food: Picasso, for example, ate only vegetables, fish, rice, and grapes. However, Francis Bacon had two or three lavish meals a day and drank up to half a dozen bottles of wine. This did not impede his work, and he argued that he liked working hungover because the brain was full of energy and all the thoughts were more distinct than ever.
Honore de Balzac consumed up to 50 cups of the strongest coffee a day in order to maintain the right amount of energy. In addition to this, Wisten Hugh Oden was also taking amphetamines daily and called his regular diet consisting of alcohol, coffee, tobacco, and amphetamines labor-saving supplies.
Tobacco in, general, can be considered one of the most common stimulants. Sigmund Freud, who smoked almost all his life, even lamented his seventeen-year-old nephew, who refused to smoke cigarettes.
The Bohemian way of life, which is often adhered to by creative people such as writers, makes them more prone to drinking and drugs. However, there are exceptions here. For example, Ingmar Bergman always worked sober and even drunken alcoholic Francis Scott Fitzgerald in later years said that it became clearer to him that writing a long story, as well as the subtle perception and judgment during editing, are incompatible with drinking.
Here you can recall the famous statement made by Ernest Hemingway: “Write drunk, edit sober.” For some, a slight intoxication is not bad, but for others, a clear and calm mind is required when writing. In such a case, it is better to drink just green tea. If you still have trouble with your writing, though, you could check out this website to get essay writing help.
3. REST
A timely rest for writers is no less important than concentration. It is very easy to get carried away in some book, but you need also to find some time to relax, which could be arranged with the help of some good daily schedule planner.
Beethoven would go out for a long walk after lunch if he were stuck with some task, which lasted almost the rest of the day. Another amateur walker Søren Kierkegaard in between work went around the whole of Copenhagen not bothering much on how to improve time management. Benjamin Franklin took air baths for about an hour in the morning and then doze for a while.
Like all of us, the great minds also suffered from a lack of concentration and procrastinated for the lack of a weekly schedule planner. The problem of procrastination was very troubling, for example, for William James. He was a university professor and often postponed the preparation of lectures until the last minute.
For many intellectuals leading a secular lifestyle, rest is all about night binges, receptions of guests, trips to restaurants and bars. However, there are less tiring ways to relax. For example, Francis Bacon read cookbooks before going to bed. Woody Allen sometimes took a shower several times a day to escape from work, and David Lynch practiced transcendental meditation.
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Summing up, we hope that this post encompassing mostly writers along with other great minds demonstrated how differently they went about organizing their own time management plan and daily routine. You may want to make use of some of their habits and see which work for you the best. Another option is to go for some work schedule maker, which you can find online.
Crystal Roman is an American writer who works in the whodunit genre. In his spare time, he helps out university students at TypeMyEssays with their essays and other types of academic works.