This is an excellent book to read when you don’t have a lot of reading time available. Maybe while you wait in line somewhere, or when you go to the bathroom (instead of taking your phone).
It’s great to see that basically if you do the work, the actual routine doesn’t matter that much. You’ll many examples of people who achieve success by following different, and sometimes opposite, routes.
Flow: 5/5
Actionability: 4/5
Mindset: 4/5
Some of My Highlights:
“‘Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition,’ Auden wrote in 1958.”
“A writer can do everything by himself – but he needs discipline.” – Federico Fellini
“His breakfast was coffee, which he prepared himself with great care – he determined that there should be sixty beans per cup, and he often counted them out one by one for a precise dose.” (Beethoven)
“Each week was devoted to a particular virtue – temperance, cleanliness, moderation, et cetera – and his offenses against these virtues were tracked on a calendar.” (Benjamin Franklin)
“…three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.” – Anthony Trollope
“If he completed a novel before his three hours were up, Trollope would take out a fresh sheet of paper and immediately begin the next one.”
“Mrs. Trollope sat down at her desk each day at 4:00 A.M. and completed her writing in time to serve breakfast.”
“He spent six weeks over a single page to write it at last as he had noted it down at the very first.” (Chopin)
“I’ve realized that somebody who’s tired and needs a rest, and goes on working all the same is a fool.” – Carl Jung
“I don’t believe in draining the reservoir, do you see? I believe in getting up from the typewriter, away from it, while I still have things to say.” – Henry Miller
“Faulkner liked to work in the library, and since the library door had no lock, he would remove the doorknob and take it with him.”
“‘I write when the spirit moves me,’ Faulkner said, ‘and the spirit moves me every day.'”
“‘People are offended when you repeatedly turn down their invitations,’ he wrote. But he decided that the indispensable relationship in his life was with his readers.” (Haruki Murakami)
“Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor.” -Joyce Carol Oates
“‘Inspiration is for amateurs,’ Close says. ‘The rest of us just show up and get to work.'”
“Character, for Kant, is a rationally chosen way of organizing one’s life, based on years of varied experience – indeed, he believed that one does not really develop a character until age forty.”
“James argued that the ‘great thing’ in education is to ‘make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.'”
“The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.” – William James
“…often, teaching English or giving piano lessons to pay the bills.” (James Joyce)
“…I can now accept this dark side as the commanding side of my personality. In accepting it, I will make it work for me.” – Samuel Beckett