“Your routine sounds exhausting!”

Why do we care what a creative person does with their day?

a 7-year-old’s to-do list

Hey y’all,

A question for you before I get started: Do you like to read about the daily routines of creative people? Why or why not?

A few days ago, I read about a writer’s daily routine, and I thought to myself, Your routine sounds exhausting!

This response was particularly funny to me because:

a) Last week I answered a reader letter that could be summarized as “Your hobby looks exhausting!” and here I was having a similar reaction.

b) I love reading about daily routines, and I’ve been thinking a lot about them because I’m reading the next book by Mason Currey, whose previous books were Daily Rituals and Daily Rituals: Women at Work. (Those books began their lives as his Daily Routines blog, which is now his excellent newsletter Subtle Maneuvers.)

c) I myself am a creature of extreme habit who has always relied on a daily routine to get me through my days.

In fact, I wrote about the power of daily routines in the very beginning of Keep Going:

(The highlighting is not mine, by the way — these pages were handily posted on Instagram.)

I can’t help but wonder if (similar to last week’s message) maybe your own personal routine should look exhausting to someone else! What sets you free — the more it’s really yours — should probably look like torture to someone else.

(I’m not sure that this is really true, but it’s a fun idea to play with.)

One thing I’ve been asking myself this week is why we care about the routines of creative people in the first place.