H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Mencken’s routine was simple: work for twelve or fourteen hours a day, every day, and in the late evening, enjoy a drink and conversation. This was his lifestyle as a young bachelor–when he belonged to a drinking club and often met his fellow members at a saloon after work–and it hardly changed when he got married, at age fifty, to a fellow writer. Then the couple worked for three or four hours in the morning, ate lunch, took naps, worked for another few hours, ate dinner, and returned to work until 10:00, when they would meet in the drawing room to talk and have a drink.
Mencken typically divided his working day as follows: reading manuscripts and answering mail in the morning (he replied to every letter he received on the same day, firing off at least one hundred thousand missives in his life), editorial chores in the afternoon, and concentrated writing in the evening. Unbelievably, he claimed to have a lazy temperament. “Like most man, I am lazy by nature and seize every opportunity to loaf,” he wrote in a 1932 letter. But this only made him work harder; believing that he was inclined to indolence, Mencken didn’t allow himself the luxury of free time. His compulsiveness meant that he was astonishingly productive throughout his life–and yet, at age sixty-four, he could nevertheless write, “Looking back over a life of hard work … my only regret is that I didn’t work even harder.”
* Source: Daily Rituals by Mason Currey