The Terrible Daily Routines Of Very Successful People

Who doesn’t want to be successful? Sure, we’ve all heard the old adage that money doesn’t buy you happiness, but not having money isn’t exactly a blast either, and it’d be nice to excel in a field, wouldn’t it?

To that end, every once in a while, someone writes a totally bullshit article about ‘the routines of the world’s most successful people’, as though the secret to transforming overnight into an award-winning multi-millionaire is as simple as waking up at 4 in the morning, drinking more water, and keeping your desk tidy.

Such articles are the equivalent of Jordan Peterson’s lectures about why you should clean your room, but aimed at people who think Elon Musk and Gary Vee are the collective second coming of Christ. These articles are everywhere, and I hate them.

Oh, piss off. https://t.co/DohNNW2Fcp

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 17, 2018

There’s no ‘simple trick’ for success, because there’s no simple definition of success. Sure, Japanese novelist and agony aunt Haruki Murakami might wake up at 4 in the morning, write for six hours, go for a run, then retire at 9 o’clock, but that is also the daily routine of somebody who absolutely does not get out enough and should consider getting a few more friends.

And anyway, a lot of your heroes had famously awful daily routines. To that end, let’s run through some of the shittiest routines of successful people, and all feel better about the way we’ve chosen to live our lives.

Hunter S. Thompson, Writer: Do A Lot of Drugs, Eat Terribly

If ever there was proof that you don’t need to be tidy, punctual, or even particularly balanced to achieve success, it’s Hunter S. Thompson, father of the Gonzo journalism movement and renowned lunatic.

Thompson’s daily routine is now the stuff of legend. According to biographer E. Jean Carroll, Thompson started each day at the comfortable time of 3pm in the afternoon. Within three hours of waking, he’d have six separate cocaine pitstops, before swapping over to acid and grass “to take the edge off.”

Oh, and he only ate one meal per day: a mountain of coleslaw, a salad tossed with taco shells, a small heap of onion rings, a slice of carrot cake, a dish of ice cream, and a bean fritter, all washed down with copious amounts of rum. Suck that, Murakami.

Bret Easton Ellis, Writer: Do A Lot of Drugs, Watch A Lot Of Porn

There’s an apocryphal story that during the writing of American Psycho, Ellis’ horrendous, blood-splattered masterpiece, the author bought two buckets and booked himself a hotel room. Allegedly, Ellis put the buckets on either side of his bed, filled the left one with cocaine, left the right one empty, and programmed a solid week of pornography on the hotel television.

Who would have imagined the man who dreamt up this character was on a lot of drugs?

Then, for the next seven days, he proceeded to write, watch porn, snort coke from the left bucket and, when it all got a bit much, vomit into the right bucket. You gotta appreciate, at the very least, the minimalism of the set-up.

Charles Bukowski, Writer: Gamble, Drink

It’d be pretty weird if Charles Bukowski, patron saint of the barflies and a man whose entire career is founded on being a big gross ratbag, had a normal daily routine: if he woke up at six in the morning, went for a jog, and ate nothing but steamed vegetables.

He didn’t, of course: Bukowski’s whole day was thrown off if he awoke earlier than midday. He’d rise at noon, head straight to the horse track, throw some money down, come home, and wander to his study with a big old six-pack in his hands to write stories about people who wake at noon, gamble, and drink too much. Hey, like they always say: write what you know.

Derek Parfit, Philosopher: Eat The Same Disgusting Meal Every Day

Derek Parfit is a genius, that rare example of a moral philosopher who revolutionised the form twice: first with the book Reasons And Persons, and then again with On What Matters, some 30 years later. He was also an odd man who lived in a University for most of his adult life, and struggled to have any conversation that didn’t revolve around philosophy.

But Parfit’s weirdest daily routine was the breakfast he devised himself and ate every single day for decades: a string of sausages, chopped-up green peppers, a hefty dollop of yogurt, and a diced banana, all mixed up in the same goddamn bowl.

Parfit, a man who adored efficiency, convinced himself that the breakfast was perfectly formulated for “maximum health.” It should be repeated at this stage that Parfit was a philosopher, not a nutritionist.

Carson McCullers, Writer: Get Shitfaced Drunk

Carson McCullers, the genius behind The Ballad Of The Sad Cafe and The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, once claimed that she survived on “gin, cigarettes, and desperation” alone, which, for the record, should absolutely be your new Tinder bio.

just been reminded of the time, deeply hungover, i smugly informed my then boyfriend and all of his housemates that "not many people know this, but cormac mccarthy? actually a woman" after getting him confused with carson mccullers

— Emily Reynolds (@rey_z) November 20, 2018

McCullers believed that she wrote best when she was drunk, and so in order to maximise her creativity, ensured that she was literally never sober. She started and ended every day with a fuck-off big glass of beer, and filled the hours in between with bottles of sherry, glass after glass of whiskey, and martinis to keep the writing flowing.

Kevin Shields, Musician: Live In A Big House, Keep Chinchillas

“I’m crazy, but I’m not mentally ill,” Kevin Shields, the lead singer of My Bloody Valentine, told The Guardian back in 2004. That may well be true, but the daily routine that the musician kept up while recording MBV’s magnum opus, Loveless, sure does sound a little unusual.

The thing took two years to record, during which time Shields holed up in a big old house, and spent his day recording guitar parts and tending to his small army of chinchillas.

“I went to the house once,” Creation’s Alan McGee told The Guardian in the same interview. “There were chinchillas, these weird little rat animals, in cages, about 20 of them, all over the room, with barbed wire everywhere.”

So hey, maybe that’s the key to overnight success — chinchillas?

Racing photo by Paul Kehrer, used under CC BY 2.0. Chinchilla photo by Filipe Ramos, used under CC BY 2.0.