David Brooks via Mason Currey on the Importance of Daily Rituals

Some years ago, I picked up Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. I had a blast reading it, getting acquainted, as it were, with the daily rituals of famous and successful people. Mozart, William James, Karl Marx, W. H. Auden, Franz Schubert, Jean-Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, Jane Austen are all in there, as are many, many others. Some of the examples are inspiring, while others border on the bizarre. For instance, the writer John Cheever would put on his suit every morning “and ride the elevator with other men leaving for work; Cheever, however, would proceed all the way down to a storage room in the basement, where he’d doff his suit and write in his boxers until noon, then dress again and ascend for lunch.” The image of the whole thing just cracks me up.

Or take the best argument ever for why we should be early risers, straight from the pen of Jonathan Edwards: “I think Christ has recommended rising early in the morning, by his rising from the grave very early.”

In any case, as I went through my Evernote entries I was delighted to stumble upon David Brooks’s article “The Good Order”—I love those serendipitous encounters Evernote affords me—where he discusses Currey’s book. Here is his take:

When she was writing, Maya Angelou would get up every morning at 5:30 and have coffee at 6. At 6:30, she would go off to a hotel room she kept — a small modest room with nothing but a bed, desk, Bible, dictionary, deck of cards and bottle of sherry. She would arrive at the room at 7 a.m. and write until 12:30 p.m. or 2 o’clock.

John Cheever would get up, put on his only suit, ride the elevator in his apartment building down to a storage room in the basement. Then he’d take off his suit and sit in his boxers and write until noon. Then he’d put the suit back on and ride upstairs to lunch.

Anthony Trollope would arrive at his writing table at 5:30 each morning. His servant would bring him the same cup of coffee at the same time. He would write 250 words every 15 minutes for two and a half hours every day. If he finished a novel without writing his daily 2,500 words, he would immediately start a new novel to complete his word allotment….

The vignettes remind you how hard creative people work. Most dedicate their whole life to work. “I cannot imagine life without work as really comfortable,” Sigmund Freud wrote.

But you’re primarily struck by the fact that creative people organize their lives according to repetitive, disciplined routines. They think like artists but work like accountants. “I know that to sustain these true moments of insight, one has to be highly disciplined, lead a disciplined life,” Henry Miller declared.

“Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition,” W.H. Auden observed.

Auden checked his watch constantly, making sure each task filled no more than its allotted moment. “A modern stoic,” he argued, “knows that the surest way to discipline passion is to discipline time; decide what you want or ought to do during the day, then always do it at exactly the same moment every day, and passion will give you no trouble.”

People who lead routine, anal-retentive lives have a bad reputation in our culture. But life is paradoxical. In situation after situation, this pattern recurs: order and discipline are the prerequisites for creativity and daring.

I went back to my copy of Currey’s book and found that Auden's statement doubly underlined. How could it not? As is Brook’s observation that creative people “think like artists but work like accountants.” Neat, right?

Of course, all that fits right into the discussion on habits which I have addressed in “Principles of Life-Change.”