7 Bad Habits That Could Make You Highly Successful
#1: Get lost.
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If we’re going to talk about highly successful men who are total assholes in real life, I don’t know why we’re skipping Pablo Picasso. After all, he’s arguably the most famous artist in history.
He makes Elon Musk look like a valet.
Donald Trump once bragged that he could shoot someone in the street and get away with it. Well, Pablo Picasso actually shot people in public, mostly art critics (with blanks).
He got away with it.
Picasso had a lot of bad habits. He routinely slept until late morning or early afternoon. He drank. He smoked. He cheated. He would get obsessed over an idea, staying up all night drawing the same thing over and over again. And yet, he lived until the age of 91. He was incredibly productive. He was worth hundreds of millions when he died. Today, his art empire makes the crypto market look like a bad joke. So forget about morning routines and kale smoothies.
Clearly, there’s more than one way to become incredibly successful, even if you’re still not a very good person.
Here’s mine:
1. Get lost.
If you’re a creator in any industry, you need to read this book called The Midnight Disease, by Alice Flaherty.
She’s a Harvard psychiatrist.
Flaherty started studying creativity after losing twins. Among the many things she learned, there’s one lesson that stuck with me: The creators we consider geniuses didn’t know when they were working on their “masterpieces.” They just produced a ton of work.
They let themselves get lost in their craft.
That’s what made them special.
Don’t believe me?
Consider Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of The Day — considered one of the most brilliant novels of the 20th century. He wrote it in four weeks, working almost 14 hours a day, with breaks for lunch and dinner. His wife helped him stick to the plan.
His goal wasn’t just about output. Instead, he wanted to “reach a mental state in which my fictional world was more real to me than the actual one.” That’s not something a life…