Werner Herzog’s lifehacks
I was always intrigued by the idea of Werner Herzog, although I must confess I’ve only seen a handful of his films, among perhaps the most well renowned, Fitzcarraldo. Anyway, an article passed across my social media timeline today listing 24 pieces of advice from Herzog. Some might apply to all of us, some are rather figurative, others are more pertinent to filmmaking, but could easily apply to other areas of human endeavour. Anyway, 24 seemed like too many aphorisms at the time, it was a Monday morning, and so I turned to ChatGPT and asked it to select just five from the 24 that might be seen as universal advice, lifehacks, for all of us.
- Always take the initiative.
- Learn to live with your mistakes.
- Expand your knowledge and understanding of music and literature, old and modern.
- Thwart institutional cowardice.
- Develop your own voice.
I asked it for its reasons for picking those over the other 19 and it basically replied that each of the others could be seen as being more pertinent to filmmaking and not particularly relevant for non-filmmakers. I don’t think that was entirely true as each of the others could be taken as advice in other contexts, but the top 5 are pretty good advice for us all. Here is the list of Herzog’s original 24 pieces of advice.