Someone at Podio (?) has compiled a lot of information about the habits of creative people into an interactive chart. Most of this info appears to come from Mason Currey’s exhaustive book and blog Daily Rituals (as well as a few other sources). Slate ran a serialized version of Currey’s work prior to the book’s publication, which is all quite good.
Click image to see the interactive version (via Podio).
Mason Currey:
Given how much time I’ve spent reading and thinking about artists’ schedules and working habits, you might expect that I would have some insight into what makes for an ideal daily routine. Is there some combination of sleep, work, exercise, coffee, and focused head-scratching or brow-furrowing that is most likely to lead to creative breakthroughs? Or, at the very least, are there some basic guidelines that will stave off blocks and guarantee a minimum level of intellectual output?
Short answer: no, not really. The one lesson of the book is that there is no one way—the rituals and habits that helped Artist A create a masterpiece would never work for Artist B; and, actually, they might not even work for Artist A for very long.
One’s daily routine is a highly idiosyncratic collection of compromises, neuroses, and superstitions, built up through trial and error and subject to a variety of external conditions.
The same data visualized differently, made by RJ Andrews at InfoWeTrust. Click to enlarge (or see it larger here.)
