Sublime

Before writing this book, I called Mason Currey, author of Daily Rituals, which profiles the rituals of 161 creatives like Franz Kafka and Pablo Picasso.

Mason Currey catalogs a variety of eccentric, mind-transforming

“My experience has been that most really serious creative people I know have very, very routine and not particularly glamorous work habits,”

how some of the greatest minds of the past four hundred years approached this exact same task—that is, how they made the time each day to do their best work, how they organized their schedules in order to be creative and productive.

My underlying concerns in the book are issues that I struggle with in my own life: How do you do meaningful creative work while also earning a living? Is it better to devote yourself wholly to a project or to set aside a small portion of each day?

He tracked his daily word output on a chart—“so as not to kid myself,” he said.

His mode of living consisted of daily visits to the British [Museum] reading-room, where he normally remained from nine in the morning until it closed at seven;

I’m scrupulous about choosing who it’s safe to wake at seven in the morning without their getting insulted. For some I perform a real service, a wake-up service; they become used to my waking them at seven or so.

The central goal of Slow Productivity is to keep an individual worker’s volume at a sustainable level.