The ridiculous lives of certain famous productive people

Back to Productivity.

If you read about the day-to-day lives of famously productive people in history, you find that a bunch (maybe even the majority) of them were able to be in complete command of their daily schedules!

In so many accounts, servants and nannies took care of trivialities such as raising the children, cleaning, preparing food.

Some of them were so pampered that they might have a certain meal brought to them every morning. Their quiet writing time in the study was not to be interrupted. Then they would stroll in the garden and have some tea and return for some more writing.

I can’t help but to read all these accounts and I can’t help but to think, "Well, yeah, I’d probably be pretty productive with that schedule too!"

TODO: what was the name of that book i read that had a ton of these? my reading journal, sadly, still has a gap in it and i’ll bet that book will be in that gap when i finally fill it.

The idea of someone holding down an 8-hour job, raising children, cooking, doing the shopping, etc. etc. etc. without "the help" and still attempting to accomplish a personal goal is, I think, kinda worth crowing about, and nobody should feel the slightest bit bad about going at it very slowly and haphazardly.

(There’s also tons of counter-examples, of course. Some people are able to be wildly productive under the worst circumstances. They have my deepest respect (and a touch of envy)!)