We all the same 24 hours that Beyonce or Steve Jobs has…

i have the book…Creative Routines

Franz Kafka, frustrated with his living quarters and day job, wrote in a letter to Felice Bauer in 1912, “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.”

Anthony Trollope, who demanded of himself three thousand words each morning (250 words every fifteen minutes for three hours) before going off to his job at the postal service, which he kept for 33 years during the writing of more than two dozen books; George Balanchine, liked to do his own laundry and who did most of his “work” while ironing; George Gershwin, who worked for twelve hours a day, from late morning to midnight, composing at the piano in pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers.

From what I understand the real key to their success, is managing to work at their craft, no matter the conditions.  They find that time and use it.  Of course these are disciplined people, whose schedules would inspire the stern admiration of the hardest-faced middle manager, but can’t we all learn to be the same?  Of course, but the key is, that we choose not to be.

“No city clerk was ever more methodical or orderly,” reflected Dickens’s son. “No humdrum, monotonous, conventional task could ever have been discharged with more business-like regularity than he gave to the work of his imagination and fancy.”