Book cover from Daily Routines blog. Used here on the basis of the "right to quote"
Hello guys! As you can already see in the title, today I will be reviewing a book that I am quite critical about. It's title is "Daily Rituals: How Artists Work" by Mason Currey. I read it because friend of mine recommended it for me. He told me that you could find in this book how famous, creative and prolific people lived. He claimed that by learning that you could adopt some of those "daily habits", and be as prolific or creative as those famous people.
I was quite critical about the idea of using this kind of information as a tool for having a better day plan, and you will read later why is that, but nonetheless it sound like an interesting book. So I gave it a try. This review will be short, because I think that I do not need to waste your time with a review of a book that I generally do not recommend to read in "self-help" context.
The author
As we can see on his homepage, Mason Currey worked as the managing editor of Metropolis, the executive editor of Print, and a senior editor at Core77, and his freelance writing has appeared in The New York Times and Slate. He ran blog called "Daily Routines" which was posting well, daily routines of famous people. The blog turned to book, as you can read on last post on his blog. And that is the fact that you can feel through the whole book...
Hindu marriage ritual. But we will not talk about that kind of rituals :) source - wikimedia
The book
Why you can feel that fact, that the book is a blog turned book? Because it have many separated chapters - they feel like each and every one chapter is one blog post, completely unrelated to the rest. One chapter = one famous person's daily habits. And while this form probably worked great for the blog, where you read one post every few days or weeks, it is awfully boring for the book, if you ask me. Of course, it enables you to read it however you want - you can pick up chapter from the middle of the book, about your favorite artist, then read first chapter, then the last one. But for me it is just boring - I never really finished whole book. That's my first problem with it.
The other problem is with my friend's statement - "by learning famous, prolific people daily habits, you could adopt some of them and become prolific too!". As I said, I am quite critical about it. Every one of us is different, it's best to work on our own daily habits, optimal for us. Of course some of those ideas are great, universal or at least worth trying, but most of them are the effect of person's life context, character, preferences. You can not reverse engineer that and be like those people just by adopting habits that they had. It's like looking at the car that makes "vroom vroom", and making "vroom vroom" sound with your mouths - it will not turn you into a car, will it? :) Of course some things are worth imitating, let's say that you love bike riding and you look at your idol. You can see that he is leaning on the left or on the right on the bike while turning right or left - you could imitate that because probably it will enable you to turn left/right better, faster. But even here - it's better to ask him why he did that and understand it, than just blatantly imitate.
The summary
If you are interested in your favorite famous person lifestyle - when he was waking up, when he was eating, when and how he was working. Then read this book. You don't need to read whole book, just chapters about your favorite person, and that's great.
If you want to read the whole book out of curiosity, then I think that the best conclusion that you can make out of this book is - every creative person has his own way of doing things, and that's great. You can create your own way, there not only one single proper way.
If you want to read this book to became just like those people, as many people on the internet are advising - be careful. Better read other books that will let you create your own habits that you consider worthy, or habits that some research says that is good for being productive or creative. Read for example "Power of Habit", or "When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing" (I hope to cover those books in good quality posts in the future :) ) Do not adapt blindly habits from famous people just because they were great people! It does not work like that - be yourself.