It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the world’s most legendary creatives followed strict routines.
Whether it’s set writing routines, bedtimes, or exercise, successful people got more done by keeping to a strict process.
Beethoven walked around Vienna each morning carrying his sketchpad. Maya Angelou only wrote in hotel rooms.
We’re fascinated by their processes. Sometimes we turn to them for inspiration. Maybe, we hope some of the magic will find its way into our own work.
I’ll be honest.
I used to think creativity couldn’t be controlled. You’d wait for inspiration to strike and then you’d get down to work. Celebrated creative people must have been blessed with more of these moments of inspiration, I thought. They were propelled by an invisible force, and they rejected any – and all – constraints.
Now I know that’s a lie, and a dangerous one, too. If we think creative geniuses don’t need to put in the work thanks to their natural talent, we’ll give up before we even begin.
Turns out the world’s most successful authors and performers stick to rigid routines.
In the New York Times, Michael Kimmelman examines the importance of routines.
“The myth is that artists are somehow different. That they leap from one peak of inspiration to another. That they reject limits — that this is precisely what makes them artists. But of course that’s not true. Most artists work as the rest of us do, incrementally, day by day, according to their own habits.”
When you want to start writing – or writing more – it’s tempting to turn to the writing routines of famous authors. Who doesn’t want to walk in the footsteps of the greats?
The problem is that your life circumstances may be different. You might not be able to get up at 6am and write for 5 hours every day.
Most of us can’t.
Yet, we can find practical lessons from the processes of the world’s most celebrated creatives.
Below, we will dig into some of the routines of the most successful writers and artists and discuss how we can apply them to our lives.
Routines are Vital for Long Term Success
In the 1970s, Stephen King was a school teacher. He would write every day.
It was during this time he wrote Carrie, the book that launched his career as a famous author.
Now Carrie, like most other great books, wasn’t written overnight. (Of course, there are exceptions. John Boyne wrote The Boy in the Striped Pajamas in two days.)
Most writers know they’re putting in daily work for long-term results.
That’s one of the takeaways in Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, by Mason Currey.
Shane O’Mara discusses this idea in an article on Psychology Today.
“The case studies also suggest that creative artists oscillate between two distinct states: they have low short-run expectations (producing a page or two of writing per day), but high long-run expectations (they know that producing a page a day every day becomes a big book over the course of a year). Keeping the long-term goal in mind seems to be a key way of overcoming the daily trauma of working, sometimes fitfully, toward some creative end.”
A writing routine – putting in the hours each day – is vital to achieve the results you crave. That bestselling book? A byline in a major newspaper? It’s within your reach if you make the time to show up consistently.
Writing Routines Hold you Accountable
Committing to writing regularly is just one part of a successful writing routine. The other is selecting indicators for success.
You can, for example, decide to write 100 words each day or 1000 words each week.
Think of these targets as “accountability metrics”, suggests Sarah Green Carmichael in HBR.
A good example is Anthony Trollop. Trollope wrote for three hours a day, but he set a very specific goal for those three hours. He would write 250 words per 15 minutes.
Routines Remove Decisions
During his time in office, President Barack Obama only wore only gray or blue suits.
Why?
Simple – Obama wanted to save his mental energy for the decisions that mattered most.
“You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.
Depending on whether you believe internet research, we make 35 000 decisions every day.
Part of the reason I stopped blogging for months was just because I didn’t even know where to begin. I’d sit down in front of my computer and struggle to figure out what to do first.
Routines, like processes, just make it easier to get to work. Consider using a tool like Trello to document your processes.
Writing Routines Make Deep Work Happen
When author Haruki Murakami is writing a novel, he gets up at 4am and works for up to 6 hours. By the afternoon, he’s ready for a workout, usually a 10km run or 1500 swim. Once that’s done, he reads, listens to some and gets to bed at 9pm. He does this without fail every day while he’s writing a new book.
The reason?
Murakami wanted to make it easy to focus deeply.
“I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”
Since setting up a writing routine, it’s far easier for me to do deep work. Part of that includes a decision to remove distractions. That’s going to be vital when you set up your writing routine.
Finding a Writing Routine to Help you Write Consistently
The point of a writing routine is help you write regularly. When you find a process that works, you’ll create the momentum you need to get valuable, original content out consistently.
Before you sit down to plan your own routine, consider this quote from writer Will Durant:
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Will Durant
We all have routines. Some are forced onto us – consider our working hours and school runs. Then there’s sleeping and eating; the daily routines that keep us alive.
Use routines to make time for the things that bring you joy and set you on the path for long-term success.
Featured image credit: Photo by Shelby Miller on Unsplash
