Whether or not we care to admit it, we all have strange quirks, rituals, and habits which carry us through the workday. For some of us, it might be something as simple as chewing on a pen. For others, it might be a necessity as time-consuming as writer Maya Angelou’s practise of only writing in hotel rooms. However, if you ever fear that your little peccadillos are something of which you should be ashamed, never fear: you are in good company.
Below are five geniuses whose achievements are almost rivalled by their eccentricities. Next time your managing partner questions you for your quirky workplace behaviour, we humbly recommend you refer them to this article.
Honore de Balzac
In honor(e) of the long-standing marriage between caffeine and the practice of law, it seemed only fitting to begin with the nerve-rattling habit of French novelist and playwright Honore de Balzac. La Comedie Humaine author drank as many as 50 cups of coffee a day to invigorate his writing process, often consuming two or three cups at a time. In his 1830s article The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee, he described his love affair with the beverage as such:
“Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle takes place…for the nightly labour begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder.”
Suddenly our hourly cups of instant Nescafe don’t seem quite so sinful.
Charles Dickens
English writer/household name Charles Dickens is renowned for his contributions to literature – however, he also harboured Great Expectations for his hair. According to an employee, the author possessed a sharp obsessive streak, and was unable to focus on his writing unless he was armed with a comb which he would run through his hair hundreds of times a day. Would he still have written his veritable library of works without a hairbrush on hand? The answer may be lost to the hair strands of time.
Yoshiro Nakamatsu
The man who holds the patent to the floppy disk and more than 3000 other inventions draws his inspiration from a bizarre source: the cusp of death. Nakamatsu has claimed the secret to his success has been controlled drowning, which he achieved by diving underwater, remaining under until his breath is nearly spent, and attaining a moment of inspiration.
“To starve the brain of oxygen, you must dive deep and allow the water pressure to deprive the brain of blood,” he said. “Zero-point-five seconds before death, I visualize an invention.”
Disclaimer: The College of Law obviously does not suggest drowning for success.
Thomas Edison
Iconic inventor Thomas Edison’s peculiar habits extended to his hiring practices. When interviewing prospective research associates, he would require the interviewee to consume a bowl of soup in front of him. If they garnished the soup with salt before sampling it, Edison would immediately fail their application. There was a method to Edison’s eccentricity: the test was designed to discern whether prospective researchers approached an untested situation with pre-conceived assumptions.
Igor Stravinsky
Many of us start our day with some kind of exercise routine, but few of us are likely to match the outlandish regime of Igor Stravinsky. The Russian-American composer would commence each day by standing on his head, which he believed would clear his mind for the many hours of composing ahead of him. Subsequent research has suggested the position can improve circulation and detoxify adrenal glands, so it appears as if Stravinsky may have been onto something.