“My daily rituals: I wake up at 4 AM and sleep at 10 PM. In the morning, I create knowledge. In the afternoon, I acquire knowledge. In the evening, I eliminate irrelevant information. In the night, I prepare for the next day.” – Professor M.S. Rao
Q3 2020 hedge fund letters, conferences and more
There are certain daily rituals, habits, practices, and lifestyles that helped ordinary individuals excel as extraordinary individuals globally. Eminent personalities including Benjamin Franklin, Ernest Hemingway, WH Auden, Stephen King, John Milton, James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, Agatha Christie, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Victor Hugo, Immanuel Kant, Maya Angelou, Beethoven, Charles Darwin, Andy Warhol, John Updike, Twyla Tharp, William Faulkner, Jane Austen, Anne Rice, Haruki Murakami, and Igor Stravinsky scheduled their daily lives to be creatively productive and achieved amazing success.
Lessons from the Daily Rituals of Famous People
Anybody can achieve success but everyone cannot achieve success because they lack the discipline to adopt the right rituals in daily life. Extraordinary achievers identified the routines that worked for them through trial and error method, experimented, and adopted them to achieve success. They underwent several challenges, obstacles, distractions, and disturbances that often threw them out of gear from their daily rituals. However, they overcame them successfully to leave their marks. Here are some takeaways from the daily rituals of extraordinary achievers. Be a morning person. Prepare a ‘to-do’ list. Follow your passions. Scribble the ideas that flash on your mind. Journal regularly. Add value to others. Express your gratitude. Sleep adequately. Avoid excessive usage of technology especially social media. Avoid checking emails in the morning unless you expect something urgent and important. Take a cold shower. Create blocks of your time during waking hours. Identify how much time each task takes. If you have the time and mood to undertake the task and execute it effectively, you can proceed. In this way, you can focus clearly on your specific task successfully. Additionally, it avoids switching costs. Switching costs are the time taken to switch from one task to another task and revert to the original task to complete it. Charles Dickens once remarked, “I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.”
Eminent personalities adopted small daily habits that paid a rich dividend at the end. They had a clear vision of where to go in their lives and followed despite distractions. They believed in their dreams. They followed their passions. You can adopt some of their healthy habits and practices and work hard consistently to achieve success in the long run.
If achieving success was easy everybody would achieve it. There must be a daily routine, discipline, and execution consistently even when there seemed to be no ray of hope. The minimum guarantee from the daily rituals is that you can lead your life with purpose and meaning and the maximum assurance is that you can achieve success in your lifetime. The takeaway is to enjoy life every day with your destination on success.
Create Your Daily Ritual
“Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.” - WH Auden
You don't have to follow completely the daily rituals of eminent people because they have set them based on the chemistry between their body and mind to unlock their potential. You must shortlist some of them that suit you to become creative, imaginative, and productive. Remember, what worked for others might not work for you. To conclude, anybody and everybody can achieve success by following the daily rituals of famous people. When it was possible for them, it is possible for you as well. Good luck with your daily rituals!
