"Discipline Is Destiny"

When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important t... See more

I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of giving ourselves clear, useful constraints to direct our lives. And it sounds like he had a strong set of values for his work, and that made the resulting discipline, if not easy, at least obvious. It reminds me of “flow” psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote that when you choose to invest in a m... See more