Great essay, thank you. I was going to add Dickens, but looking it up he seems to have kept to a strict 9am-2pm writing schedule. Enormous energy in everything he did, and those five hours don't include his lectures or campaigning/fundraising, but still more of an example of what you can achieve by actually working for five hours a day rather than pretending to do so, rather than of a Stakhanovite work ethic.
Talking of Stakhanov, Stalin's work ethic was legendary, as was his command of detail. Also extended, as with Napoleon, into multiple fields. Also creative, though frequently in ways so hideous that it feels uncomfortable to describe him as such.
And Augustus. Worked constantly, which allowed him an extraordinary degree of administrative control of the Roman world - which in turn, together with his creative genius, allowed him to remake it. Labor omnia vincit.
Great essay, thank you. I was going to add Dickens, but looking it up he seems to have kept to a strict 9am-2pm writing schedule. Enormous energy in everything he did, and those five hours don't include his lectures or campaigning/fundraising, but still more of an example of what you can achieve by actually working for five hours a day rather than pretending to do so, rather than of a Stakhanovite work ethic.
Talking of Stakhanov, Stalin's work ethic was legendary, as was his command of detail. Also extended, as with Napoleon, into multiple fields. Also creative, though frequently in ways so hideous that it feels uncomfortable to describe him as such.
And Augustus. Worked constantly, which allowed him an extraordinary degree of administrative control of the Roman world - which in turn, together with his creative genius, allowed him to remake it. Labor omnia vincit.