Routine Matters

Of all my weaknesses, not having a daily routine I can stick to is the one that causes me the most stress. It has certainly been made worse by not working outside the house, but I was always overscheduled and scrambling even when I worked. Being responsible for a child helps impose some structure, but it also amps up the stress, because I’m constantly disappointed in myself for not having a reliable rhythm to our days.

I can read descriptions of the routines and schedules of others ad infinitem. I find the minutiae of the lives of celebrities extremely soothing. So I love this Web site I found last week, Daily Routines, “How writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days.” 

There are two main themes on the site: the real life of notable people, and how creative types maximize their productivity. One’s simply voyeuristic, the other’s instructive. 

Most of the subjects on Daily Routines are writers, and most are men. So there’s a lot descriptions of what-the-fuckity? monastic schedules that start at 5 a.m. with a cup of hot water, then stretches of writing that are put on pause only for vigorous and solitary exercise. These men are not interrupted by small children; they are responsible to no one but themselves. Get a load of Isaac Asimov’s day: “His usual routine was to awake at 6 A.M., sit down at the typewriter by 7:30 and work until 10 P.M.” I’m simultaneously envious and disgusted. 

And fascinated. Listen to Truman Capote: “I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis.” (Read the P.G. Wodehouse entry for more tea and martinis.)

It’s the mix of glamour and Spartan conditions, discipline and decadence that I can’t get enough of. Like Gay Talese’s schedule: “His summer routine is to write in the morning, play tennis in the afternoon, then maybe watch a game on the 36-inch Sony Trinitron with DirecTV service that he has set up in his office. His tastes run from the Yankees to Japanese skiing.”

The preciousness that comes with writers writing about their writing process makes me chuckle. Here’s Jeffrey Goldberg: 

There are certain advantages associated with being a home-based writer. One is that I usually don’t shave until about 11:30 or so, which gives my skin time to wake up. On those days when I must appear in public early, I use the Gillette Mach 3, whose blades are inordinately expensive but thorough; on days when I don’t have to shave until the late morning (or the late afternoon), I use a disposable, because I’m cheap and because I like to check how fast my blood clots.

Working at home has other advantages: I get to see my children whenever I want, I get to watch CNBC obsessively, and every day is dress-down day.

There are disadvantages, to be sure, which include isolation, desolation, panic, and ennui. …

There are some very practical passages about writing on Daily Routines that I will be returning to, because they hold so much wisdom, like this from Michael Lewis: “If you wait for that ‘perfect moment’ you’re not going to be very productive.” Jonathan Safran Foer has a similarly pragmatic approach: “I don’t curate the museum of my writing. I am not at all prissy about it. Things don’t have to be a certain way, and life gets in the way all the time.”

Daily Routines reminds me of of my favorite peek at a celebrity’s daily life, Vogue editor Anna Wintour’s alleged schedule, as reported by unauthorized biographer Jerry Oppenheimer. I reviewed his book “Front Row” (which pretty much “verified” the portrayal of Wintour in “The Devil Wears Prada,” by the way) and have never been able to get this passage out of my head:

Anna’s schedule was rigorous. Up at five a.m., she usually played a mean game of tennis before having her hair and face done professionally. In the office around eight a.m., she had rounds of meetings and made dozens of quick editorial decisions before going out for a high-protein lunch of a lamb chop or a hamburger . … She usually left her office around six, and her evenings were as filled as her days. There were charity events that she had to attend – Anna has graciously given her time as a power in the fashion world to AIDS awareness and breast cancer. There were parties where she had to make an appearance.

Isn’t that the ultimate? Working hard, playing hard. And hair and makeup done professionally, every morning and probably most evenings, too.

Maybe hair and makeup, and not a bimonthly cleaning lady, is what I really need to get my life organized.

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Tagged as: Anna Wintour, artists, daily routine, Vogue, writers