Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002)
“I work all the time,” the evolutionary biologist and writer told an interviewer in 1991.
I work every day. I work weekends, I work nights…. [S]ome people looking at that from the outside might use that modern term “workaholic,” or might see this as obsessive or destructive. But it’s not work to me, it’s just what I do, that’s my life. I also spend a lot of time with my family, and I sing, and go to ball games, and you can find me in my season seat at Fenway Park as often as–well, I don’t mean I have a one-dimensional life. But I basically do work all the time. I don’t watch television. But it’s not work, it’s not work, it’s my life. It’s what I do. It’s what I like to do.
Asked to account for his formidable work ethic, Gould said he thinks it’s ultimately a question of temperament–“some odd and inextricable mixture of lucky accidents of birth and inheritance and an encouraging environment.”
You have to have high levels of bodily energy and not everybody has it. I’m not physically strong, but I have very great intellectual energy, I always have. I’ve been able to work all day. I don’t have to get up and get a drink of water or watch TV for half an hour. I can literally sit and work all day once I get going, not everybody can do that. It’s not a moral issue. Some people seem to see that as a moral question. It isn’t. It’s a question of body type and temperament and energy levels. I don’t know what makes us what we are.
* Source: Daily Rituals by Mason Currey