Illustration: Nishant Choksi

Illustration: Evelin Bundur

Illustration: Denise Eliane

Photo-Illustration: Stevie Remsberg; Photos: Getty Images

Image: Lauren Lee

I’ve kept a journal on and off since I was 14 years old. In addition to journaling, which documents my most personal thoughts, I also keep work notebooks. The structure of my notebooks is a little fuzzier: they serve as a catch-all for ideas, resources, people, and places. It’s amazing to revisit them to get a snapshot of where I was and what I was thinking about at that moment in time. And yet it’s not a particularly accessible or well-organized system. If I want to share these thoughts more widely, I’ll need to take a page from David Sedaris’s book and take his advice: “Jot things down during the day, then tomorrow morning you flesh them out.”

I love reading about famous peoples’ processes. I look for meaning in their rituals and routines in hopes of finding wisdom that will make me more productive. Joyce Carol Oates an excellent productivity role model: she’s written over 40 novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction.