If genius is close to madness, then works of genius require working like a mad man, woman, or muppet.

As Amanda Green writes on Mental Floss–drawing from Mason Curry’s Daily Rituals: How Artists Work–some of history’s most creative people had the most peculiar workflows. Like how:

If you make enough money, people call you eccentric rather than crazy. Productivity godfather Benjamin Franklin provides a bespectacled case study: As Green notes, the Founding Father enjoyed an air bath every morning, wherein he spent an hour of reading and writing whilst totally nude. An interesting take on radical transparency, is it not?

The New Yorker has reported on how caffeine cramps your creativity–though Beethoven never heard such a thing. The composer opted for 60 beans per cup for his morning coffee, Green notes. Perhaps this was the cause of his later decomposition.





Mystery maven Agatha Christie, whose And Then There Were None freaked Fast Company out back in high school English, had a writerly sort of wanderlust: As Green reports, the ultra-prolific author (80 novels, 19 plays, etc.) never owned a desk. She wrote everywhere else.

Maybe this was also because he was a megalomaniac.

Maya Angelou once said that she could write a poem about anything she saw outside her window–and that sensitivity is perhaps why she cloisters herself in the most beige of surroundings: the universalized nondescriptness of the modern hotel room.

While it doesn’t look like work in the same way as meaningless meetings do, some people prefer to think about their projects before setting out to work. Einstein was one. Genius architect Frank Lloyd Wright was the same: He wouldn’t start sketching anything until he worked out the entire design in his head. Maybe this was also because he was a megalomaniac.