If you haven't read or listened to this book yet, I highly recommend it: Daily Rituals: How Artists Work[1]
It's a collection of daily routines of many famous and prolific artists. The surprising thing about so many of the artists is that they only work 2 or 3 hours per day, then spend the rest of the day walking around, socializing, etc. But they consistently show up and put in the work and it adds up to some amazing things over time.
This reminds me of another great book about beating procrastination: The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play[2]
In that book, the author talks about his extensive work helping graduate students complete their dissertations. I can't cover all the great points here, but when working with these students he has them create an "unschedule" where they have to schedule guilt-free play activities as the top priority. Then he actually limits the amount of work they are allowed to do on their dissertation to only a couple of hours per day. The effect is quite amazing at turning students around from dreading and avoiding their dissertation to really trying to maximize the limited time they have to work on it. And having guilt-free play lets them really disconnect from the work and have true recovery so that they have the motivation and energy to hit the project again and again every day. Seems counter-intuitive at first, but as I've applied this to different projects, it's amazing how much more I'm able to accomplish.
Someone mentioned a book called War of Art [1] here on Hacker News which I went out to buy and read.
The author, Steven Pressfield, describes it as some metaphorical "Muse" (God of Art) that helps inspire your imagination when you set aside some time to do work.
I loved that line of thinking since work can't happen if you don't show up. It motivated me, as indie dev that works from home, to make a concerted effort to show up ready code. Doing it consistently (whether or not it's a long time) will eventually lead to new and improved versions of software.
"This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete."
Steven Pressfield is an amazing writer. I think he's the one who wrote about the Spartans and how ridiculously tough they were. I encountered the book as a paperback left in a bin for soldiers to take and read during some dumb deployment. Not that one, but a small one to Poland. This was 2002.
Yes I think it was called "Gates Of Fire". There is another book of his called "The Afghan Campaign" that I liked. It is about a greek soldier passing through Afghanistan for Alexander's campaign to reach India.
Bret Deveraux is a PHD historian and a critic of Pressfield. He picks apart his argument for "universal warrior" and concludes it has an ideology behind it. The ideology is fascism.
edit: the earlier version of my post used the word "agenda" instead of "ideology", but that was a bit unfair given Bret himself gives Pressfield benefit of doubt.
This reminds me a bit of the etymology of genius, which at first was something you had, a protective/tutoring spirit. Over time the meaning changed more to something someone is, like naturally intelligent and driven.[1] Stroke of genius is still one of those phrases using the old definition, and in the modest amount of situations were it happened to me, it did feel like something coming from outside of me.
> The surprising thing about so many of the artists is that they only work 2 or 3 hours per day, then spend the rest of the day walking around, socializing, etc. But they consistently show up and put in the work and it adds up to some amazing things over time.
Artists don't have stand ups, team meetings, planning sessions, one-on-ones, commutes and whatever other office distractions to deal with though. I suppose figuring out how to survive as an artist is distraction enough.
Someone blew my mind describing why some artists are not appreciated until they are dead.
The theory as it went is that most artists aren’t “ahead of their time”, it’s that they see Now in a way that nobody else will understand for years. Eventually, with the aid of the lens of nostalgia we see that they really “get us”, as we now understand ourselves.
Being out in the world is how they “get” us. It’s material, not faffing about.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Any artistic people I've worked/associated with have a certain "clarity" about the world around them, that I think most people don't. Artists delve into culture and social things that are not easily recognized by people who aren't paying particular attention, I guess you could say. Not in all cases, and I think it depends on the type of creativity, but yeah... That's my simplistic way of describing it, anyway.
IMO, artistic people often see the "true nature" of things and ingest/interpret them in a way that is pretty judgement-free and quite "open". It allows them to be inspired and influenced by those things, and grow their understanding of the world around them, and thus interact with it and contribute back to it in an organic way. Again, all my subjective opinion from many years of being creative myself and collaborating with creative people. :)
Clarity I think comes from being “part” of the world or some specific part of it. While many and most “live” through it, the Artist sees the inverse of a sorts of it - the “big picture within some lens”. Then, tries to process and communicate the unseen truths in whatever medium they are accustomed.
Another thing about this is that artists permit themselves to not fully understand the technology of things, so they just use it, in a way that maybe the ones who understand how it works doesn't because they are already fascinated with how it works
Of course, but then you have living examples like Bob Dylan. Some people have incredible pattern matching abilities and most artists I’ve met consume as much human culture as possible and great ones manage to conjure up something of their own.
It is also much safer to praise a dead artist. Famous alive writer might suddenly turn out to be big fan of some genocidal world leader, embarrassing everyone who loves his earlier work.
Dead people are mostly safe from this, though not completely - some dirty laundry might surface years after death, forever tarnishing the image, but such occurrences are rather rare.
If you are talking about alive people, then no. It was akways the case. The obvious example is Nobel prize laureate Knut Hamsun, who publically praised Hitler. In the soviet Union it was even more pronounced: the government was regularly doing mythbuilding around dead figures, like polar aviator Tchkalov and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin: they were famous while alive, but became demigods after deaths. You see, you never have to worry that this famous person would do. What if you build up a hero's image, and then he defects to the west?
Also, with artists, only after death you can have his 'complete' works, not having to worry about increasing supply of them, which would push the price down.
Do you know this to be true? Most artists that I know, which is most people I know, struggle with as many work-related distractions as I do. My sanctioned office distractions at least "count" to my employer (I get paid for that time).
There's a big difference between "massive success" and having a gallery show. Once you have a decent relationship with a gallery, if you don't care so much about money you can just let the gallery handle that side of things.
A friend of mine has been a professional painter for the last 50-ish years. He makes a couple trips a year to the gallery to deliver paintings. The gallerist tries to take that chance to suggest a few motifs that seem to sell better, but doesn't get too pushy.
Well, that depends. Be an illustrator for someplace like Disney, and you'll have all that. Illustrate comics, though? 10 hour workdays, and your arm will probably give out at some point - mostly meeting deadlines. Graphic designer? You have it.
Most folks that sell have to arrange meetings with clients, take time to mail art, organize prints, either deal with a printer or printing their own stuff, answer customers, interact on social media... and so on. You might not be creating anything creative, but reproductions of wedding photos and pets.
The non-art parts of being an artist add up, and few folks can survive being an artist. At best, most folks have a full time job (or other income) and selling art is, at best, a side hustle.
A gallery helps with some of this. Of course, it is pretty common for the gallery to take 40-50% of the selling price, plus whatever they charge to frame the piece. You then have meetings with them, and they'll drop you in a heartbeat if you don't produce enough or don't sell well. A few will let you rent space, but you generally need to care for it.
Jeff Tweedy of Wilco fame has a nice new book on a strategy similar to this. Haven't read it, but looks pretty good. He talks about how everyone should try one artistic thing and be willing to fail. That gets the Jitters out the way, then they can focus and do something interesting.
What's more surprising (I would say, crazy) is that anyone expects more. Nobody works at their top level for more than 2-3 hours a day. Maaaaaybe 3-4 tops. Doesn't mean you can't be productive for many more hours, but you are not gonna be able to work effectively on tasks that are anywhere near the limit of your ability. You just can't and nobody does it....not athletes, not artists, not writers, not philosophers, not mathematicians, ..- not anyone doing hard creative work
Also, for anyone doing that kind of work, things like walking around and socializing is both vitally recuperative and indirectly productive in its own right
It also depends on prioritizing high quality work. Plenty of places would be happy to have you at below optimal efficiency for twice the time to make up for communication inefficiency.
I agree. I think you cheat this some - depending on the medium - by separating time spent creating with time spent editing. In myself, I've noticed that editing can reinvigorate the creative process, but if I'd been creative earlier, the burst of creativity spurred by editing is short-lived, and I'm often ready for a nap when I'm done.
You have to do it every day - creativity comes in bursts and you don't know when it's going to show up so you need to be the one showing up every day to work on it.
Hemingway would write (sober) every morning and then be drunk by lunch and for the rest of the day and early evening. But he worked every day for a few hours. People like to focus on his appetite for drinking but he got his work done first.
Frank Herbert was quoted in "Shoptalk: Learning to Write with Writers" saying something similar:
"A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, 'Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write.' There's no difference on paper between the two."
I'm in formation for ordained ministry in a Christian tradition, and something that's really emphasised is the need to say the 'Daily office' – two short services at the beginning and end of the day. Ideally with other people, but in the end you often being alone.
It felt like busy work at the start, but it's a surprisingly powerful way of focussing the day upon a particular intention – in my case, putting everything I do in the day into the context of my religious tradition.
Personally I've always struggled with habits and routine, but I've now got quite a powerful experience of what persistence can do, with a fairly small commitment in time.
I'm better now, but these procrastination problems have plagued me my whole life. To the point that I was suicidal while writing my Thesis, I'd spend 10-12 hours in the library every day and accomplish almost nothing except self torture.
I can't imagine how helpful this "un-scheduling" would have been to me at that time.
The Now Habit was a book I liked. Good descriptions of experiments and their insights.
However, the Daily Rituals book I didn't find as compelling. The information sources are not first-hand, because most of these artists are long dead. Their routines as laid out in the book is at best only partially accurate. It's far more likely that these profiles are mostly apocryphal.
Like the Jogging Baboon from Bojack Horseman says: "Every day it gets a little easier… But you gotta do it every day — that’s the hard part. But it does get easier."
I recently watched a video made by an indy game dev (a field I'm currently also trying out). He spoke about his day, but then dropped a comment that some days he only worked 2-3 hours.
But currently here in South Africa things are a little dicey, it's the middle of winter and I'm probably sleeping more than I should.
Even so I'm trying to work as many hours as possible on my own project, but some days that turns out to be only 2-3. At the very least I'm tracking my hours and expected release dates, so I have some idea of the scope involved.
You are under the impression that art sells itself?
Most artists I know - the ones that sell, anyway - need to socialize. They spend more time trying to sell art than they do making it because the work bits are the selling. So much of this is "soft sells": Engaging a community, curating one's image, and so on. But most folks have a day job, which is generally true of dead artists as well (so many weren't rich in life).
Yes, if you go to little known artists' exhibitions you'll soon notice the partner playing the role of sales assistant, watching, identifying, approaching...
It's a collection of daily routines of many famous and prolific artists. The surprising thing about so many of the artists is that they only work 2 or 3 hours per day, then spend the rest of the day walking around, socializing, etc. But they consistently show up and put in the work and it adds up to some amazing things over time.
This reminds me of another great book about beating procrastination: The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play[2]
In that book, the author talks about his extensive work helping graduate students complete their dissertations. I can't cover all the great points here, but when working with these students he has them create an "unschedule" where they have to schedule guilt-free play activities as the top priority. Then he actually limits the amount of work they are allowed to do on their dissertation to only a couple of hours per day. The effect is quite amazing at turning students around from dreading and avoiding their dissertation to really trying to maximize the limited time they have to work on it. And having guilt-free play lets them really disconnect from the work and have true recovery so that they have the motivation and energy to hit the project again and again every day. Seems counter-intuitive at first, but as I've applied this to different projects, it's amazing how much more I'm able to accomplish.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15799151-daily-rituals
[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/95708.The_Now_Habit