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Visualized: The Daily Routines of Famous Creatives
What is the best daily routine to unlock creativity, or is there such a thing?
Many modern suggestions for optimizing creativity—like scheduling time for “deep work,” and building small, sustainable “atomic habits”—can be traced back to famous creatives in many different eras. And though they all found success, they employed different methods as well.
In this unique visualization, RJ Andrews from InfoWeTrust has charted how notable creatives in different fields spent their days. He picked 16 of the 161 “inspired minds” covered by Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, a book by writer and editor Mason Currey published in 2013.
How Much “Creativity Time” in Famous Daily Routines?
Dividing the day into 24 hours, Andrews denoted certain categories for daily activities like working creatively, sleeping, and other miscellaneous endeavors (meals, leisure, exercise, and social time).
For the creatives with a separate day job—Immanuel Kant and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart—their ordinary labor is also counted in miscellaneous activities.
Below is a breakdown of the daily routine of all 16 people featured above:
| Name | Occupation | Creative (hrs) | Sleep (hrs) | Miscellaneous (hrs) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maya Angelou | Writer/Poet | 9 | 7.5 | 7.5 |
| W.H. Auden | Poet | 11.5 | 7 | 5.5 |
| Honoré de Balzac | Novelist | 13.5 | 8.5 | 2 |
| L.V. Beethoven | Composer / Pianist | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| Le Corbusier | Architect | 8.5 | 7 | 8.5 |
| Charles Darwin | Naturalist / Biologist/ Geologist | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| Charles Dickens | Writer | 5 | 7 | 12 |
| Gustave Flaubert | Novelist | 10.5 | 7 | 6.5 |
| Sigmund Freud | Psychologist | (Read more…) |