The routine matters more than its specific shape

Currey's central discovery, drawn from dozens of profiles, is that history's most productive creative people rarely agree on what a good routine looks like — early risers and night owls, teetotalers and heavy drinkers, hermits and social butterflies all appear across these pages — but almost all of them had a fixed, repeatable structure they defended without exception.

The specific hours, rituals, or superstitions varied wildly by temperament, but the underlying mechanism was the same: removing the daily question of when and whether to work by pre-deciding it, so willpower didn't have to be spent negotiating with yourself every morning.

This reframes the search for a productivity "hack" — the goal isn't copying someone else's exact schedule, but building your own fixed structure suited to your energy and constraints.

Takeaway: stop looking for the one correct routine — build a fixed one suited to you, and then guard it the way these artists did.