Inside the Lounge: The Structure Behind My Gentleman’s Life

A Routine and Tradition That Modernity Seems to Have Forgotten

There’s a delicate idea of “structuring” and “orchestrating” life.

In the 2020s, there’s a well-known formula for outlining a way of life—so-called “Daily Routine Creation”—an effort to create a time block for every single 24 hours of the day.

Mostly, it’s to maximize the productivity of one’s life to the highest degree possible.

Back in the 2010s, when this concept began to spread across the internet—I once tasted it and…somewhat obsessed over the idea.

I was indulged in the feeling of being organized, productive in life, and in control of every single minute of the day.

And as with every great story, there was a turning point.

When I looked at the lives of great figures I admired—from real-life thinkers and writers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Charles Baudelaire to fictional icons like Ian Fleming’s 007:

I noticed something strange in the way they lived that seemed lost in the sea of “productive optimization daily routines.”

Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with waking up at 4–5 a.m., working immediately as the first task of the day, working out daily with a strict diet, and meditating for half an hour…

(In fact, even today, these aspects of daily life still apply to my current schedule—but the format has changed.)

The problem with hyper-optimization—where every single minute is aimed at productivity for the sake of becoming a hustle champion—is the lack of introspective and creative consumption.

When people think of consumption, images of phone scrolling, brainless content binge-watching, and excessive drinking to escape the harshness of life usually come to mind.

That’s the extreme side of things that (I can’t deny) bizarrely happens among the masses.

So here, we have two extremes—one for pure productivity and one for pure hedonism.

The funny thing is—you can find a middle ground between the two.

That said, when we look back at the great lives of artists, creatives, thinkers, and sovereign minds—they always followed a pattern of:

• Intense Work

• Release the Tension

• Cultivate the Mind

• Leisurely Rest

And that is the core idea of my current structure for living an elegant life.

To not only create with purpose but cultivate character along the way.