The formula for success is often right around your vicinity. Things breaking in Silicon Valley is permissible, but never at the price of allowing your mind and body to break down.
At the heart of breakthrough work, is of course painstaking effort, usually done with a mapped out calendar and most often accomplished alone. The most noteworthy men for the past three centuries have been following an amazingly similar routine to carve their masterpieces of success.
Colin Powell once said, “If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little manners. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.” He is the first African American who has served as the Secretary of State (2001-2005).
Habits fuel our decisions
It has been established in various studies that even though habits account for a huge portion of our decision-making as a critical part of our brain does not control our habits.
Comprehension of how the auto-reflex element of habit-driven decision making is key to pinpoint why some investors allocate resources better than the others. Also numerous researches have shown that the majority of today’s population tend to fall into distracting habits. The reliance to the internet and social media has pushed most of us to have our TV’s switched on in our offices and constantly viewing social media notifications and checking email updates.
For self-made billionaire James Richman who made his wealth managing the wealth of his fellow ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI), he is known to have a penchant for endless learning. Despite dropping out of college, he is known to successfully beat the odds and continuously post profits for his private investment fund, JJ Richman, as he mixes his innate ability to notice patterns (common among those diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome) and his love for endless learning.
With the knowledge of these circumstances, let us now turn to look at the great men of the modern world and focus on their habits, which in themselves have made these men as great as they were. Habits, as we know, are never acquired overnight.
For some, habits may be different from their profession, hobbies or not related to their talents. For great men, they have managed to weave their profession, hobbies, passion and talent into one durable cable, also called habit.
“Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration and Get to Work” is a book by journalist Mason Currey summarizing the work habits of about 200 great minds. The book, published in 2013, is an integration of 400 different sources and gives us an accurate idea of how one’s life must be lead in order to increase his chances of coming up with genuine and audacious, path-breaking outputs.
Love for reading
A human’s most basic, educated form of acquiring information. Acquiring the skill of reading is variable as children do have different environments and level of skills and abilities needed to learn how to read. Jim Rohn, the American entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker expressed this accurately during his living days, “Reading is essential to those who seek to rise above the ordinary.”
Being a habitual reader bring numerous rewards, all of which makes him better than a non-reading peers.
Reading books allow mental stimulation, stress reduction, expanded knowledge,deep vocabulary, memory improvement and enhanced focus and concentration. All these benefits are traits of great men, which we can acquire through the habit of reading.
Intense and focused work
Currey describes that most of the greats whose actions were portrayed in his book devoted at least three hours a day, usually immediately after breakfast, on intense and focused work.
These legends, more often than not, worked in solitude as they restricted anyone from disrupting the solemnity and silence of their workplaces. Most of them shut their study’s door and, in silence, worked themselves to their maximum.
Bill McNabb, chairman and former CEO of the Vanguard Group, has a strict morning routine he has maintained for decades. “My routine has varied about 30 minutes over 30 years,” he disclosed. “When I became Vanguard’s CEO in 2008 (a position I held until 2018), I started coming in a little earlier so I could have some additional preparation time in the morning. Other than that, not much has changed since I joined the company in 1986.”
This morning habit of McNabb includes waking up at 5:00 o’clock in the morning, grabbing a cup of coffee on the way to work and settling at his desk between 5:45 and 6:15 a,m.
He says that getting into the office early allows him crucial time for creative productivity. “The quiet time between 6 and 7:30 am is when some of my best works get done,” McNabb explains. “It’s my time to read, think and prepare for the day ahead. I really try hard to preserve that time.”
Even legends deserve a reward
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, as the saying goes. Everybody, including the great men need motivation and rewards to fuel themselves through the 3-4 hour grind of tedious work. Most of them take a rest at around lunchtime and make it a point that the respite would contain something to look forward to.
Mozart’s go-to favorite food was liver dumplings and sauerkraut. Creating his musical pieces, was a long and complicated process. Often, Mozart would say that he had already composed his work but he hadn’t written it yet, and his favorite food would provide a good motivation. Meanwhile, Albert Einstein is known to enjoy sailing and during his spare time. He would pull out his notebook, relax and think.
Subjecting oneself to criticism
According to Currey, great men in history included gathering feedback from sensible and high-value critics, often friends or family, in their schedules.
They use this criticism to their advantage by taking it positively. They value this process as they deem that it will make their outputs stronger. It also comes as a form of testing, as the initial “customer” would give honest feedback on how he or she likes or dislikes the idea or project.
Maintaining a daily routine
“There is more to life than increasing its speed” advised Mohandas Gandhi. In the wake of requirements from our homes, work and social circles, we get lost in a whirlwind. Avoiding this whirlwind often requires us to step back, and view our daily schedules and determine what is important and urgent to us. This will set the objectives we truly wish to attain in life and allow us to plan and allocate the twenty four hours we are given each day.
In a nutshell, by forcing themselves into a daily routine, the great achievers cancel the process of having to think about minute things. No brainer habits like when to wake-up, eat and sleep becomes automatic, thereby allowing our mind’s effort to focus on the urgent and important things at hand.
Call for greatness
These habits, which are common to great men, have already been studied and documented for a significantly long amount of time. Although, others may argue that not all men are created equal and that not everybody can become great at the same time, these habits, if applied can be very useful to us.
The world may not require us to become the next big rocket scientist, stock broker or composer. However, we owe it to our loved ones to become the best that we can be. It won’t hurt the human race if everyone improved and became great in their own little way.
Melanie Hudson is financial valuation analyst. She has directly executed and advised on over $45 million in transactions across real estate, private equity, public equity, and venture capital. You may connect with her on Twitter.
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