Workdays of Geniuses

From Mozart to Picasso, geniuses deliberately shaped their workdays to produce breakthroughs in creativity and performance. Author Mason Currey has researched 161 great artists, scientists, writers, composers and philosophers across history and found that none of them relied on their talents alone: they designed daily rituals and used original tricks that could work just as well for normal mortals like you and me. What strategies do you use to optimize your productivity?

Anthony Trollope demanded of himself to write 3,000 words every morning for three hours, 250 words every 15 minutes, before going to work at the postal service, where he labored for 35 years while writing two dozen books. 

i cannot claim to be in a league with Trollope or any of the other 160 greats in Mason Currey's book "Daily Rituals: How Artists Work." 

But Trollope's ritual is very close to my own: After focusing on my clients for the first hour each day, I dedicate the balance of my morning to my book projects. 

This simple ritual helped me finish my doctoral dissertation within one year of proposing it (while working as CEO of Swiss Consulting Group and teaching at Columbia); my peers took four to five years to finish their Ph.D. It helped me publish seven books. 

Don't worry about the content; the principle is to start each day with your top priority (not by opening your emails) and produce a sizable accomplishment before moving on to the next thing. 

Now I discover that I have been in good company. Currey shows that people like Woody Allen, Charles Darwin, Jane Austen, Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, Ludwig van Beethoven or Benjamin Franklin came up with ingenious but simple ways to keep life at bay (see video). 

In 1921, Franz Kafka wrote in frustration to his girlfriend Felice Bauer that "time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible, then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers."

Sound familiar?

Kafka and others came up with interesting and at times bizarre routines to help them bypass procrastination.

• Sigmund Freud asked his wife to set out his clothes, select his handkerchiefs, even put toothpaste on his toothbrush each morning. (My wife would never let me get away with that.)
• Andy Warhol called his girlfriend and colleague Pat Hackett every morning to report on his activities. She took notes that she typed up afterward. (Again, no chance of that with my wife.)
• Nobel laureate William Faulkner screwed off the doorknob to his office in order to work without being disturbed. (That could also be a problem given today's open-door policies.)
• Pablo Picasso declared one day a week the "At Home Day" to discharge all obligations imposed on him by his friends in one afternoon.
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart rose every day at 6am, filled his day to the hilt with composing, teaching, concerts and social activities, and went to bed very late. (Then again Mozart did not live very long.)
• Ludwig van Beethoven (who lived a lot longer) took a walk after lunch each day--taking paper and pencil with him. 
• Ernest Hemingway counseled that one should write only as long as one still has energy and knows what comes next. Then one should stop and take a break.

I am a big friend of rituals and regular (daily, weekly monthly and annual) practices. Many of my clients too have institutionalized actions that bring them inspiration or fulfillment, or that lift their strategy or leadership game to a new level.

Some clients have declared Friday mornings a work-free zone so they can step back from the action and focus on vision and strategy. Others take time on Monday mornings to declare breakdowns and rally their teams to turn them into breakthroughs. 

Those for whom appreciation does not come naturally use one hour on Thursdays to acknowledge and thank people. Others take the first day of each month to complete unfinished business that fell through the cracks. And so on. 

What do you say? What regular practices or rituals do you use to maximize your creativity and productivity? I look forward to your comments, here or on my blog http://thomaszweifel.blogspot.com/.

Dr. Thomas D. Zweifel is a strategy & performance expert and coach for leaders of Global 1000 companies. His book The Rabbi and the CEO: The Ten Commandments for 21st Century Leaders was a National Jewish Book Award and Foreword of the Year Award finalist.