No Punching a Time Clock for Us

I've often struggled with my daily regimens and habitual work routines. When I was working a job, my schedule was very much set in stone by knowing when it was time to punch in and out, when to go to lunch, how long I could take, etc. In the world of self-employment, however, it's a bit more challenging. 

The challenge...

There is always the dogmatism of some who feel like every moment we're awake should be filled with work and not just work but the type which is associated with our vocation. There are also those that feel how they do things is how everyone should do it.

I must admit I've grappled with this philosophy because I've discovered that spending hours of continuous focus on a solitary task tends to diminish my creative thinking as fatigue sets in. I would then think of myself as undisciplined or berate myself for being so lazy.

Poor, poor, pitiful, me...

As time passed and the more I discovered about great creative thinkers throughout history, the more I realized that there may be less amiss with me than I have thought. Many famous and wealthy people have had various working routines and strange habits to help them and they're all as varied as the individuals themselves. 

• Maya Angelou would work for about six hours and she always did so from a hotel or motel room.
• Mozart would compose and teach for over ten hours a day but his time was broken up. In between he would dine, read, and take walks with his wife.
• Charles Darwin worked for short times dispersed between recreation, reading and dining. 
• Beethoven started each day with a cup of coffee from exactly 60 coffee beans, no more and no less. He would carefully count them. To him it was the perfect cup of coffee. 

Some famous people worked regular or mundane jobs that helped in their creative thinking.

• Albert Einstein worked as a patent clerk when he came up with his Theory of Relativity.
• Walt Whitman was a newspaper editor even after he was publishing his famous poems. 

Aside from the work routines, some famous celebrities had some very strange habits many of which bordered on the bizarre.

• Aldous Huxley kept a revolver in his desk drawer and whenever he finished writing a book he would fire a shot out of his office window.
• Artist Georgia O'Keefe painted from the rumble seat of her Model A ford.
• Leo Tolstoy, though wealthy, wore only ragged peasant's clothes because of his disdain for the upper class.
• Earnest Hemingway wrote standing up.
• Composer Franz Schubert wore glasses which in itself isn't strange but he never took them off. He even wore them to bed.
• Michelangelo rarely bathed and would wear the same clothes for days. He would even sleep in them, boots and all.
• Victor Hugo wrote in the nude. He instructed his servant to hide his clothes to prevent him from leaving the room until he met his deadline.
• Dan Brown hangs upside down to prevent writer's block. 
• Friedrich Schiller, the German poet, kept rotten apples in his desk drawer because the putrid smell jolted his brain into activity.
• Truman Capote was the oddest of them all. He never called anyone whose phone number added up to 13 nor would he stay in a hotel room whose numbers also added up to 13. He never began or finished a piece of work on a Friday. He was a chain smoker which he claimed help him in his creative process but would never allow his ashtray to have three cigarette butts. He would put then in his pocket. 

I have some habits of my own that don't go as far as those mentioned which are:

• I start everyday handwriting in my journal, and I have a specific refillable fountain pen I've had for years used for only that purpose and I never use it for anything else.
• I use only a hardcover dictionary and thesaurus. Nothing digital.
• I draw using dip pens before making it digital.
• I have to wear shoes when working at my desk. 

No, these aren't as bizarre as Capote or Huxley but I'm grateful I'm not so oddball. I think.

Feel free to list any of your own habits or routines, strange or not, in the comments below.