2007-12-12-reading-this-post-made-me-want-to-be-a-workaholic.html

---
layout: post
title: Reading this post made me want to be a workaholic
date: 2007-12-12 11:42:58.000000000 -08:00
categories:
- technical-writing
tags:
- genius
- Scott Berkun
- Technical Writing
- workaholic
status: publish

published: true
---

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<p>Reading this <a href="http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/how-to-be-a-genius/">post by Scott Berkun</a> made me want to be a workaholic. Here's an excerpt:</p>
<blockquote><p>Show me a genius and I'll show you a workaholic. Van Gogh produced 2000 works of art between 1880 and 1890 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh">1100 paintings and 900 sketches</a>). That's 4 works of art a week for a decade, and he didn't start making art until his mid twenties. DaVinci's famous journals represent decades of note taking, doodling and observations, and it's a good guess that work was the center of his life: no spouses or children are mentioned in any of our records of him (though he likely had lovers in his studio). Picasso made over 12,000 works of art (<a href="http://picasso.csdl.tamu.edu/picasso/">“Give me a museum and I'll fill it” he said, and he was right</a>) in his lifetime, including sculptures, paintings and other mediums. Shakespeare wrote more than 40 plays, not to mention dozens of sonnets, poems and of course, grocery lists. These are people who practiced their crafts daily and sacrificed many other ordinary pleasures in life to make their work possible. Every math or music prodigy practiced to produce the work they are famous for (See the <a href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-expert-mind&amp;page=4">ten year rule</a>).</p></blockquote>
<p>(This is an essay that Scott mentioned in <a href="http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2007/new-essay-how-to-be-a-genius/" target="_blank">his post here</a>.)</p>
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