Book: Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

I just read the book When and it mentioned this book. The idea was so interesting that I decided to give it a try.

What first caught my attention was the pattern of the peak, through, rebound everywhere. It’s not everywhere because we’re just mentioning artists here. I believe a similar pattern tends to emerge whenever people have control over their time.

There’s certainly outliers to this, but artists listed on this book usually had some hours of uninterrupted work to do their craft. Some interesting highlights of what happened to the vast majority of them:

  • Their peak happened early in the morning (with some exceptions, of course)
  • They had walking as part of their daily routine
  • They blocked a big portion of uninterrupted time to work
  • They were very passionate about what they did
  • They had a strict routine

This is my perception about the stories but, as expected, there are examples of people that deviate from this.

There are not many notes for this book because it is very shallow. Instead of writing notes, I prefer to refer to the book directly if I needed. Here are the few ones I wrote:

  • After writing something take some time to stop and copy it. When copying, you will be thinking about it
  • Mozart composed in the morning and then gave lessons. He also composed at night. He worked too much though and wrote until 1 just to wake up at 6
  • 3 hours a day would produce what a man is out to write. The guy wrote every day before getting dressed for breakfast
  • John Adams: “I try to take a random freedom in my daily life so I will be ready when ideas come”
  • Jean-Paul Sartre usually deep worked 3 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the afternoon. It was his only rule.