Success leaves clues.

If you want to be successful, why not study from those who came before?

Why not learn from those who have done what you want to do?

Walking your own path can be hard and overwhelming, especially when it goes against the norm.

By learning from those who have walked a similar path before you, you can emulate them and make your journey a little easier.

When I look at my path, it involves writing.

I write — a lot— and I would love to do it full-time and make a living doing it.

If this is the path I'll be walking, I’m curious how other successful writers created their life’s works and made an income doing so.

How were they able to come up with so many ideas?

What did their creative processes look like?

How were they able to put out so much (or so little, but high-quality work) and make a living from it?

I’m asking a lot of questions, I know, and these are questions I don’t have answers to, but we have to start somewhere.

And what better place to start than daily routines?

This past week I looked into the daily routine of none other than the great, Maya Angelou.

Let’s explore how she was so productive, creative and balanced and what we can learn from how she structured her daily routine.

A Day In Maya Angelou’s Life

In an interview done in 1983 with Claudia Tate (as covered in Mason Currey’s book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work), Angelou describes her daily work schedule or routine as follows,

“I usually get up at about 5:30, and I’m ready to have coffee by 6, usually with my husband. He goes off to his work around 6:30, and I go off to mine. I keep a hotel room in which I do my work—a tiny, mean room with just a bed, and sometimes, if I can find it, a face basin. I keep a dictionary, a Bible, a deck of cards and a bottle of sherry in the room. I try to get there around 7, and I work until 2 in the afternoon. If the work is going badly, I stay until 12:30. If it’s going well, I’ll stay as long as it’s going well. It’s lonely, and it’s marvelous. I edit while I’m working. When I come home at 2, I read over what I’ve written that day, and then try to put it out of my mind. I shower, prepare dinner, so that when my husband comes home, I’m not totally absorbed in my work. We have a semblance of a normal life. We have a drink together and have dinner. Maybe after dinner, I’ll read to him what I’ve written that day. He doesn’t comment. I don’t invite comments from anyone but my editor, but hearing it aloud is good. Sometimes I hear the dissonance; then I try to straighten it out in the morning.”

Also in Currey’s book Daily Rituals, “I try to keep home very pretty,” she has said, “and I can’t work in a pretty surrounding. It throws me.”

What We Can Learn

Early Morning Deep Work

There are several things to notice about Angelou’s routine.

One thing I noticed immediately — and loved— about Angelou’s routine is that she’s an early riser.

I don’t know if she was always a morning person or if routine made her so, but I love the early mornings for the calm and stillness they offer.

Some night owls feel this way about late nights as well.

I love the mornings because they allow you to write in peace and experience clarity before the chaos and demands of the world beg for your attention.

The early mornings allow you to be one with your work and creations.

You can fully commit yourself to the work before meeting the commitments of others.

I love early morning deep work because you knock out a big chunk of your work before the afternoon sees you.

Then you have a choice:

Work more or end the day here.

You see that in Angelou’s routine: “If the work is going badly, I stay until 12:30. If it’s going well, I’ll stay as long as it’s going well.”

That choice is liberating. And powerful.

You don’t have to force yourself to work if your willpower is low.

But if the energy and the creativity are there, then you continue.

Don’t Wait for Inspiration

There’s a misconception that writers, artists and the creatively inclined wait for inspiration.

They wait for this magical idea to come to them before they create and bring that ideal to reality through hours and hours of work.

But Angelou was nothing of the sort.

Her daily routine reveals that.

Her routine reveals that she was disciplined.

Extremely disciplined.

She didn't wait for inspiration before she wrote.

She showed up and got to work.

This level of discipline — to show up and do the work even if she didn’t feel like it or want to, but still show up — speaks to the level of success she achieved.

Angelou’s routine and her willingness to do work for at least five hours each day — even when it went poorly — is a great indication that great artists don’t wait for inspiration.

Her discipline and work ethic remind us that successful writers and artists still have to do the work.

It’s the process everyone follows whether you are starting or you have several best-sellers under your belt.

You set goals, create a plan based on what you know and figure out the other things along the way.

Then you show up and keep showing up.

And when you aren’t feeling inspired?

You still show up.

All the great artists show up to their work like most people do to a 9-5 (give or take a few hours and greater flexibility).

But at the end of the day, art is work and it should be created as such.

Less Work, More Output, More Life

Angelou's routine offers an alternative to the hustle culture we find ourselves victim to nowadays.

We’re told to grind for hours and then sleep when we’re dead.

But if an award-winning writer worked 5-7 hours a day, why should we grind for 12-16 hours and sleep 4 hours or less a night?

She offers us insight that it is possible to work less and still achieve big results.

It’s possible to have your health, relationships, well-being and work existing harmoniously without sacrificing one for the other.

You can flip the script of hustle culture.

And create a flow where you work 4 - 6 hours a day and still enjoy life.

In the time you are not working, you are filling up your cup, in such a way that when you do come back to work, you will do your best work because you are at your best.

Keep it Simple

Angelou’s routine was simple. Yours should be too.

You want a schedule and routine that you can keep up with and maintain.

It was said that Angelou used this routine for years, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Your routine should bring you peace and flow, not make you feel rushed or pressured.

How do you achieve this?

You keep it simple.

You avoid doing too many things as having too many moving pieces welcomes complexity.

Productivity and creativity don’t thrive in complexity.

Simplicity is possible but what pulls you from keeping things simple or doing what you need to do is distractions.

It’s easy to get distracted when you have a lot of things fighting for your attention.

And all those things are never the main thing.

When you’re creating your routine, ask yourself:

“What am I trying to achieve?”

Have one goal or outcome and create the routine and systems around that one goal.

Angelou’s goal was often writing books, so that’s what her routine was engineered for: writing a book.

“What am I trying to achieve?”

This has to be the question that you always come back to.

In anything you do, frame it through the lens of the question.

If it doesn’t fit, then it’s something you shouldn’t be doing and it’s a distraction.

Distractions need to be eliminated.

If you can’t avoid not doing it, then do it later, delegate, or automate it and return to the main, simple thing.

Maya Angelou’s routine wasn’t complicated. It wasn’t glamorous. But it was powerful.

She understood what so many creatives struggle with— waiting for inspiration.

She knew success didn’t come from waiting.

It comes from discipline, consistency, and creating a structure that allows you to do your best work.

Angelou proved that you don’t need to work 12-hour days to produce world-class work.

You don’t need to grind yourself into exhaustion.

You simply need:

• Deep work in distraction-free environments.

• The commitment and discipline to show daily.

• A balance of productivity and creativity.

• A simple, repeatable routine that supports your long-term vision.

So whenever you’re feeling uninspired, struggling with productivity or grinding because of hustle culture, take a page from Angelou’s book.

Simplify your routine.

Create boundaries and structure.

Honour your craft.

Maybe book a hotel room.

But most importantly — show up. Because when you show up, great work happens and you stack the odds in your favour.

4 takeaways from Maya Angelou’s routine:

1. Early mornings and deep work

2. Don’t wait for inspiration

3. Less work, more output

4. Keep it simple

— Shana

I hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter and I’ll see you in the next one.