There’s a trend on the Internet these days to mirror the behaviour of successful people — we know these people have attained a certain level of respect, so to do the same, we should adopt their habits and their lifestyles.
One image I’ve seen going around the web these days is, “How the most brilliant people scheduled their days” articles, with round-the-clock logs of time spent by people like Benjamin Franklin, Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo.
Some of the things these guys spent their days doing are how we’d all like to spend our days, if we had the time. Charles Darwin, for example, did about four hours of work before lunch, before doing the following: “read newspaper,” “nap,” followed by the “third walk of the day.”
Charles Dickens, after writing in his study for five hours, would spend the rest of his afternoon taking a “vigorous walk through the countryside.”
This isn’t to mention their extended breakfast or coffee breaks throughout the day. Sigmund Freud dedicated a good amount of time in the morning to trim his beard, while Ludwig van Beethoven spent time each morning counting out precisely 60 beans for his cup of coffee.
In all, though, what comes across from these schedules is that these famous historical figures broke up their schedules of work to what we would now consider nontypical — shorter, and with frequent breaks. (Except for French novelist Honoré de Balzac, who woke up close to 1 a.m. and, with the help of “close to 50 cups of black coffee,” then proceeded to write for close to 13 hours a day. He was the prototypical 19th century workaholic).
It made me think of how you’d graph my daily work week routine. Certainly, if I took four hours in the afternoon to “walk up and down the garden,” I would no longer have a job. I’d also need a garden, first.
Unlike Beethoven, I do not count out a precise number of beans each morning. I hardly measure the amount of coffee grounds I put in the machine. (Like Balzac, though, I do binge on an excessive level of black coffee).
I’ve often heard calls for reducing our typical work week to 30 hours, and for those of us who work the typical 9 to 5 shift, I can imagine most of us would be on board with that. But what would one do with those extra 10 hours? Would you spend it on long leisurely walks, or take some time to expertly trim your beard?
I know one ritual of successful people I would adopt: The Nap. Even Balzac, the over-stimulated 13-hour grinder French novelist, got an extra hour of shut-eye around 9 a.m. Victor Hugo took a daily visit to the barber, which explains his enviable style. The man’s beard is as impressive an accomplishment as Les Misérables.
They say variety is the spice of life, and you gotta wonder if these historical figures had this whole thing figured out. Except Balzac. Take a break, fella.
