Daily Rituals

Frustrated with his living quarters and day job, Franz Kafka wrote in a letter to Felice Bauer in 1912, “time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers. ”Kafka is one of 161 inspired—and inspiring—minds, among them, novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians, who describe how they subtly maneuver the many (self-inflicted) obstacles and (self-imposed) daily rituals to get done the work they love to do. Among the 161 are Thomas Wolfe who wrote standing up in the kitchen atop the refrigerator though he had writer's block; and Sigmund Freud who slept naked on a hard-back chair because he was convinced that dreams were caused by contractions of muscles during sleep; and Haruki Murakami who writes before dawn while listening to music and drinking coffee.