Daily Rituals How Artists Work

“the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing.”

A solid routine fosters a well-worn groove for one’s mental energies and helps stave off the tyranny of moods.

W. H. Auden (1907–1973)
“Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition,” Auden wrote in 1958. If that’s true, then Auden himself was one of the most ambitious men of his generation

This was one of William James’s favorite subjects. He thought you wanted to put part of your life on autopilot; by forming good habits, he said, we can “free our minds to advance to really interesting fields of action.”

to follow a routine is to be on autopilot. But one’s daily routine is also a choice, or a whole series of choices. In the right hands, it can be a finely calibrated mechanism for taking advantage of a range of limited resources: time (the most limited resource of all) as well as willpower, self-discipline, optimism. A solid routine fosters a well-worn groove for one’s mental energies and helps stave off the tyranny of moods.

Who can unravel the essence, the stamp of the artistic temperament! Who can grasp the deep, instinctual fusion of discipline and dissipation on which it rests!
—THOMAS MANN, Death in Venice

The dogs start talking to me and I like to make a fire and maybe some tea and then sit in bed and watch the sun come up. The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.”

he even succeeded in chaining himself to the desk from roughly 10:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.

work is still the best way of escaping from life!”

my time at my desk. Every twelve hours recorded on it, I plot a point on a cumulative