Thinking about this topic of work habits lately, and so keyed on this passage, from this New York Times profile of S.T. Joshi, H.P. Lovecraft scholar and atheist/agnostic writer.
Mr. Joshi does not teach, and he rarely lectures. For money, he writes. He keeps to a rigorous schedule, working every day from about 9 to 5, scheduling periodic breaks for refreshment. “I am sort of a tea addict,” he said. “I structure my day by cups of tea. If you don’t enforce that kind of discipline as a freelancer, you won’t get anything done.”
The article also has this passage, after mentioning academic ‘amateurs’ like Christopher Hitchins, Sam Harris, and James Randi and the illusionists Penn and Teller:
Perhaps because many academic philosophers take atheism to be a given, the only common-sense position, it is left to these quirky, freelance amateurs, with their large cabinets of obsessions, to make the public case against God.
