The Morning Routines of Crazy-Successful People

Great work requires just that : work . However , discipline looks unlike for everyone – maybe you ’re more of a night person and your mornings are better spent lazily making breakfast . Or , perhaps you know that you ’re sharpest in the morning and you need to hop to it .

Part of what makes look at how talented , prolific people spend / spent their mornings so fascinating is the absolute diversity ; there ’s no one ethical drug for winner . Your morning ritual is your own and should reflect your passion , end , and personal queerness . And there are a lot of quirks in this list . look at you , Beethoven .

Marilyn Monroe, actress

Monroe may have pioneered the high - protein breakfast smoothie , but of course , the star ’s version stands out from the crowd of kale , Mangifera indica , and almond butter that fills up Pinterest table today . In a1952 interview , she said , " I ’ve been told that my eating habits are absolutely outlandish , but I do n’t think so . Before I take my morning shower , I start warming a cup of Milk River on the hot plate I keep in my hotel elbow room . When it ’s hot , I fall apart two sensitive eggs into the milk , whip them up with a fork , and wassail them while I ’m dress . I supplement this with a multi - vitamin pill , and I doubt if any MD could commend a more nourishing breakfast for a working girl in a hurry . "

Toni Morrison, writer

The last American to gain ground the Nobel Prize in Literature , Morrison is a working female child ’s genius . While the canonically great homo of the eld had servants and married woman to support them because they were too busy astonishing under the weight of their own grandness , Toni Morrison had to get it done all on her own .

According to Mason Currey , writer ofDaily ritual : How Artists Work , Morrison used to pen in the eve , but in the ' XC switched to mornings . She rises around 5 am , makes coffee , and pauses to “ watch the light come . ” She explains , “ Writers all prepare ways to approach that place where they have a bun in the oven to make contact , where they become the conduit , or where they engage in this mysterious process . For me , the light source is the signal in the transaction . It ’s not being in the light . It ’s being therebefore it arrives . ”

Joan Miró, artist

Miró struggle with depression his whole life story , Currey says , but when he discover painting , his illness became much more manageable . To keep his mental health and his aesthetic process good for you and fertile , he create a check dawn subprogram , bug out at 6 am . First , he wash , then delight his chocolate and a few slices of cabbage . At 7 , he painted in his studio until 12 , and then engaged in an hour of vigorous exercise : boxing in Paris , jumping rope in Sweden , gymnastics in Barcelona , and swimming at Mont - roig , the seaboard hamlet where his kinsperson spent their summers .

Gertrude Stein, writer, and her partner, Alice B. Toklas

The modernist author and her partner had an adorably freaky daybreak routine that orb around the pursuit of cows and rock and roll . And while Stein relied on Toklas to take care of every particular of their lives “ almost to the point of parody , ” as Janet Malcolmwrites , somehow Stein ’s codependency manages to remain wizardly .

Case in point , the visibility of the brace that appeared ina 1934 yield ofTheNew Yorker : “ Miss Stein gets up every morning about ten and drinks some coffee , against her will … After her tub , she puts on a huge fleece bathrobe and write for a while , but she prefers to compose outdoors , after she gets dress … Miss Stein arrest out and sits on a campstool with pencil and diggings , and Miss Toklas dauntlessly switch a cow into her line of visual modality … When the great lady has an inspiration , she write speedily , for about fifteen minute . But often she just sits there , look at moo-cow … ”

Flannery O’Connor, writer

O’Connor wasdiagnosed with lupus in 1950and realized she would have to be deliberate and disciplined with her eubstance and her writing . She oncewroteto a friend , “ Routine is a stipulation of endurance . ” She started the day at 6 am with meditative morning prayers fromA Short Breviary . After her infusion of church property , she shared a Thermos of coffee in the Georgia kitchen with her mother and mind to the weather report over the radio receiver . Then , back to pray for the 7 am morning mass . After this second dose of the good news , she write from 9 am until twelve noon , generally averaging three pages in these three hour , which still left her exhausted due to her term .

Louis Armstrong, musician

Armstrong was on the road so much , Currey claims , that he wash and decorate at his hotel room , then arrived at the carrying out locus hours before he had to be on degree , just so he could performhis day-after-day sustenance ritual .

Ludwig van Beethoven, composer

Currey says Beethoven get his daylight by counting out a ego - prescribed 60 coffee bean beans , which he ground and brew for his morning chocolate . His washup habits were particularly unique . According to biographerAnton Schindler , Beethoven believe that the prophet “ Mohammed did not exaggerate a tittle in the turn of ablution he order …. he would place upright in greatdéshabilléat his washstand and pour heavy pitcher of piss over his hired man , bellowing up and down the exfoliation or sometimes humming loudly to himself . Then he would stride around his room with wheeling or staring centre , jot something down , then resume his pouring H2O and tatty singing . ”

Audrey Hepburn, actress

Hepburn never skip breakfast , usually take two eggs , whole - wheat toast , and coffee with milk . Once a calendar month , she would have a “ detox day ” during which she kept herself well hydrous and ate only fresh yield , veg , and yogurt . She preferred to exhaust organic , and the only exercise she liked to take was walks in the fresh air . Hepburn believed that her care and attention to a healthy diet generate her the vim she needed for her ask schedule as an actress , activist , and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador .

Marilyn Monroe in bathrobe