Work Habits

 Civil War historian and novelist Shelby Foote often wrote with an old-fashioned dip pen while dressed in his pajamas. 

Both Napoleon Bonaparte and Winston Churchill liked to dictate letters, one letter immediately after another. 

Churchill used ACTION THIS DAY stickers to spur responses to his queries and directives.

Joseph Stalin was an insomniac. Many an officer in the Kremlin got little sleep due to the fear that the phone on his desk might ring at two in the morning.

Benito Mussolini kept an encyclopedia in his office so he could brush up on arcane subjects and impress visitors of his vast knowledge. [Mussolini also had a large office which required that visitors cross a vast space before reaching him.]

Charles de Gaulle, while president of France, often spent weekends in a house that did not have a telephone. Its guardhouse, however, had a phone. Staff needed to consider if they wanted the old man to walk out to the guardhouse to take a call.

Novelist Joseph Heller kept three-by-five cards in his wallet so if he thought of a good idea or line, he could jot it down. He also thought that having the last line of a novel in mind during the writing process helped, but that was not always the case. He kept a card with "I am a cow" during the writing of one novel and never used it.

William Faulkner said, "My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey."