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1-Page Summary of Daily Rituals
Overview
What do you do to get yourself going in the morning? Do you go on a run, eat breakfast, sit at your favorite table or work late into the night? All of these things help some people be more productive. We can learn from history’s greatest artists, musicians and writers about how they did it.
This passage reveals the habits of great thinkers and artists such as Beethoven, Sartre, and Marx. It tells how many beans Beethoven used in his coffee each morning, what famous writer preferred to work facing a cow, and why Benjamin Franklin liked to walk around naked every day.
“I especially enjoyed the morning routines of some of my favorite artists. Those eccentricities made their stories even more interesting to me, like Beethoven and his coffee beans.” – Ben S, Audio Lead at summary
Big Idea #1: Most artists do their creative work during a particular time.
We’re all familiar with the romantic image of a person who works through the night to create something amazing. But this isn’t how everyone functions.
Poet W.H. Auden, for instance, doesn’t fit the stereotype of a night owl who works at night. He preferred to work during the day and was very adamant about it.
A lot of people enjoy working at dawn or in the early morning hours. Author Toni Morrison is one such person, who likes to get up at around 5 a.m., and witness the transition from night to day. She feels that it’s mystical and helps her write better.
Some people get so much energy from the morning that one day simply isn’t enough. Novelist Nicholson Baker, for example, gets two days in one by waking up early to write and then going back to sleep. He wakes up again around 8:30 AM for his second day.
Although most people prefer to work in the morning, there are others who do their best creative work at night.
For example, author Ann Beattie is a night owl. She’s said that we all have different clocks and she prefers to work at night from midnight to 3 am.
Gustave Flaubert was another writer who liked to work late at night. He did this so he could fulfill his social and familial commitments during the day and still have time to write.
Big Idea #2: Some creators have more time than others because of their life circumstances.
Did you know that Richard Wright wrote a 500 page novel in five months? It’s impressive but also made possible by the New York Writer’s Program, which provided him with a full time salary during that period. Most artists only dream of being so fortunate.
Great minds often have a difficult time getting their ideas out there because of time and money issues. For example, Wolfgang Mozart was very busy teaching or socializing with patrons who helped finance his compositions. He only had five hours per night to work on his compositions before he had to get up for the next day’s activities.
Karl Marx was an influential political theorist. He lived in London as a political refugee, suffering from poverty and illness before completing the first volume of his book Das Kapital.
Although we don’t choose the circumstances of our lives, not everyone is willing to work hard and sacrifice in order to pursue their passion. For example, Haruki Murakami worked at a small jazz club in Tokyo for several years before his career took off.
For some, working in an office is appealing because it offers stability. For example, author Henry Green had plenty of family money and could have devoted all his time to writing but he chose a job at the head office of his family’s manufacturing business instead.
