How to live
365 Days A Year Dr Schindler
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (FULL Audiobook)
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preface of how to live on 24 hours a day
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to live on 24 hours a day by Arnold
Bennett preface this preface though
placed at the beginning as a preface
must be should be read at the end of the
book I have received a large amount of
correspondence concerning this small
work and many reviews of it some of them
nearly as long as the book itself have
been printed but scarcely any of the
comment has been adverse some people
have objected to a for a volunteer tone
but as the tone is not in my opinion at
all frivolous this objection did not
impress me
and had no way to reproach been put
forward I might almost have been
persuaded that the volume was flawless a
more serious structure has however been
offered not in the press but by sundry
obviously sincere correspondence and I
must deal with it a reference to page 43
will show that I anticipated and feared
this disapprobation the sentence against
which protests have been made is as
follows quote in the majority of
instances he the typical man does not
precisely feel a passion for his
business that best he does not dislike
it he begins his business functions with
some reluctance as late as he can and he
ends them with joy as early as he can
and his engines while he is engaged in
his business are seldom at their full HP
close quote I am assured in accents of
unmistakable sincerity that there are
many businessmen not merely those in
high positions are with foreign
prospects but modest subordinates with
no hope of ever being much better
who do enjoy their business functions
who do not shirk them who do not arrive
at the office as late as possible and
depart as early as possible who in a
word put the whole of their force into
their day's work and are genuinely
fatigued at the end thereof I am ready
to believe it I do believe it I know it
I always knew it both in London and in
the provinces it has been my lot to
spend long years in subordinate
situations of business and the fact that
not escaped me that a certain proportion
of my peers showed what amounted to an
honest passion for their duties and that
while engaged in those duties they were
really living to the fullest extent of
which they were capable but I remain
convinced that these fortunate and happy
individuals happier perhaps than they
guessed did not and do not constitute a
majority or anything like a majority
Varna main convinced that the majority
of decent average conscientious men of
business men with aspirations and ideals
do not as a rule
go home of a night genuinely tired I
remain convinced that they put not as
much but as little of themselves as they
conscientiously can into the earning of
a livelihood and that their vocation
bores rather than interests them
nevertheless I admit that the minority
is of sufficient importance to merit
attention and that I ought not to have
ignored it so completely as I did so the
whole difficulty of the hard-working
minority was put in a single colloquial
sentence by one of my correspondents he
wrote quote I am just as keen as anyone
on doing something to exceed my program
but allow me to tell you that when I get
home at 6:30 p.m. I am NOT anything like
so fresh as you seem to imagine
close quote now I must point out that
case of the minority who throw
themselves with passion and gussto into
their daily business task is infinitely
less deplorable than the case of the
majority who go half-heartedly and
feebly through their official day the
former are less in need of advice how to
live at any rate during their official
day of say eight hours they are really
alive
their engines are giving the full
indicated HP the other eight working
hours of their day may be badly
organised or even frittered away but it
is less dangerous to waste eight hours a
day than 16 hours a day it is better to
have lived a bit than never to have
lived at all the real tragedy is the
tragedy of the man who is spaced to
effort neither in the office nor out of
it and to this man this book is
primarily addressed but says the other
and more fortunate man although my
ordinary program is bigger than his I
want to exceed my program - I am living
a bit but I want to live more but I
really can't do another day's work on
the top of my official day the fact is I
the author ought to have foreseen that I
should appeal most strongly to those who
already had an interest in existence it
is always the man who has tasted life
who demands more of it and it is always
the man who never gets out of bed who is
the most difficult to rouse well you of
the minority let us assume that the
intensity of your daily money-getting
will not allow you to carry out quite
all the suggestions in the following
pages some of the suggestions may yet
stand
I admit that you may not be able to use
the time spent on the journey home at
night but the suggestion for the journey
to the office in the morning is as
practicable for you as for anybody
and that weekly interval of 40 hours
from Saturday to Monday is yours just as
much as the other man's though a slight
accumulation of fatigue may prevent you
from employing the whole of your HP upon
it
their remains then the important portion
of the three or more evenings a week you
tell me flatly that you are too tired to
do anything outside your program at
night in reply to which I tell you
flatly that if your ordinary day's work
is thus exhausting then the balance of
your life is wrong and must be adjusted
a man's powers ought not to be
monopolized by his ordinary day's work
what then is to be done the obvious
thing to do is to circumvent your order
for your ordinary day's work by a ruse
employ your engines in something beyond
the program before and not after you
employ them on the programme itself
briefly get up earlier in the morning
you say you cannot you say it is
impossible for you to go earlier to bed
overnight to do so would have set the
entire household I do not think it is
quite impossible to go to bed earlier at
night I think that if you persist in
rising earlier and the consequence is
insufficiency of sleep you will soon
find a way of going to bed earlier but
my impression is that the consequence of
rising earlier will not be an
insufficiency of sleep
my impression growing stronger every
year is that sleep is partly a matter of
habit end of slackness I am convinced
that most people sleep as long as they
do because they are at a loss for any
other diversion how much sleep do you
think is daily obtained by the
powerfully healthy man who daily rattles
up your street in charge of Carter
Patterson's van I have consulted a
doctor on this point
he is a doctor who for 24 years has had
a large general practice in a large
flourishing suburb of London inhabited
by exactly such people as you and me he
is a curt man and his answer was curt
most people sleep themselves stupid he
went on to give his opinion that 9 out
of 10 men would have better health and
more fun out of life if they spent less
time in bed other doctors have confirmed
this judgment which of course does not
apply to growing youths
rise an hour an hour and a half or even
two hours earlier and if you must retire
earlier when you can in the matter of
exceeding programs you will accomplish
as much in one morning hour as in to
evening hours but you say I couldn't
begin without some food and servants
surely My dear sir in an age when an
excellent spirit-lamp
including a saucepan can be bought for
less than a shilling you are not going
to allow your highest welfare to depend
upon the precarious immediate
cooperation of a fellow creature
instruct the fellow creature whoever she
may be at night tell her to put a tray
in a suitable position overnight on that
tray two biscuits a cup and saucer a box
of matches and a spirit lamp on the lamp
the saucepan or the saucepan the lid but
turned the wrong way up on the reversed
lid the small tea pot containing a minut
quantity of tea leaves you will then
have to strike a match that is all in
three minutes
the water boils and you pour it into the
teapot which is already warm in three
more minutes the tea is infused you can
begin your day while drinking it these
details may seem trivial to the foolish
but to the thoughtful they would not
seem trivial
the proper wise balancing of one's whole
life may depend upon the feasibility of
a cup of tea at an unusual hour end of
preface of how to live on 24 hours a day
by Arnold Bennett this LibriVox
recording is in the public domain
chapter one the daily miracle yes he's
one of those men that don't know how to
manage good situation a regular income
quite enough for luxuries as well as
needs not really extravagant and yet the
fellows always in difficulties somehow
he gets nothing out of his money
excellent flat half-empty always looks
as if he's had the brokers in new suit
the old hat magnificent necktie baggy
trousers asks you to dinner
cut glass bad mutton or Turkish coffee
cracked cup he can't understand it
explanation simply is that he fritters
his income away wish I had the half of
it I'd show him so we have most of us
criticized at one time or another in our
superior way we are nearly all
Chancellor's of the Exchequer it is the
pride of the moment newspapers are full
of articles explaining how to live on
such in such as some and these articles
provoke a correspondence whose violence
proves the interest they excite recently
in a daily organ a battle raged round
the question whether a woman can exist
nicely in the country on 85 pounds a
year I have seen an essay how to live on
eight shillings a week but I have never
seen an essay how to live on 24 hours a
day
yet it has been said that time is money
that proverb understates the case time
is a great deal more than money if you
have time you can obtain money usually
but though you have the wealth of a
cloakroom attendant at the Carlton Hotel
you cannot buy yourself a minute more
time than I have or the cat by the fire
has philosophers have explained space
they have not explained time it is the
inexplicable raw material of everything
with it all is possible without it
nothing the supply of time is truly a
daily miracle at a fair genuinely
astonishing when one examines it you
wake up in the morning and lower your
purse is magically filled with 24 hours
of the unmanufactured tissue of the
universe of your life it is yours it is
the most precious of possessions a
highly singular commodity showered upon
you in a manner as singular as the
commodity itself for remarked no one can
take it from you it is unstealable and
no one receives either more or less than
you receive talk about an ideal
democracy in the realm of time there is
no aristocracy of wealth and no
aristocracy of intellect genius is never
rewarded by even an extra hour a day and
there is no punishment waste you're
infinitely precious commodity as much as
you will and the supply will never be
withheld from you no mysterious power
will say this man is a fool if not a
knave he does not deserve time he shall
be cut off at the meter it is more
certain than consoles and payment of
income is not affected by Sunday's
moreover you cannot draw on the future
impossible
to get into debt you can only waste the
passing moment you cannot waste tomorrow
it is kept for you you cannot waste the
next hour it is kept for you I said the
affair was a miracle is it not you have
to live on 24 hours of daily time out of
it you have to spin health pleasure
money content respect and the evolution
of your immortal soul it's right use its
most effective use is a matter of the
highest urgency and of the most
thrilling actuality all depends on that
your happiness the elusive prize that
you are clutching for my friends depends
on that strange that the newspaper is so
Enterprise seeing an up-to-date as they
are are not full of how to live on a
given income of time instead of how to
live on a given income of money money is
far commoner than time when one reflects
one perceives that money is just about
the communist a thing there is it
encumbers the earth in gross heaps if
one can't contrive to live on a certain
income of money one earns a little more
or steals it or advertises for it one
doesn't necessarily muddle one's life
because one can't quite manage on a
thousand pounds a year one braces the
muscles and makes it guineas and
balances the budget but if one cannot
arrange that an income of 24 hours a day
shall exactly cover all proper items of
expenditure one does muddle one's life
definitely the supply of time though
gloriously regular is cruelly restricted
which of us lives on 24 hours a day and
what I say lives I do not mean exists
nor muddled
through which of us is free from that
uneasy feeling that the great spending
departments of his daily life are not
managed as they ought to be which of us
is quite sure that his fine suit is not
surmounted by a shameful hat or that in
attending to the crockery he has
forgotten the quality of the food which
of us is not saying to himself but which
of us has not been saying to himself all
his life
I shall alter that when I have a little
more time we never shall have any more
time we have and we have always had all
the time there is it is the realization
of this profound and neglected truth
which by the way I have not discovered
that has led me to the minut practical
examination of daily time expenditure
end of chapter one
of how to live on 24 hours a day by
Arnold Bennett this LibriVox recording
is in the public domain chapter 2 the
desire to exceed ones program but some
one may remark with the English
disregard of everything except at the
point what is he driving at with his 24
hours a day I have no difficulty in
living on 24 hours a day I do all that I
want to do and still find time to go in
for newspaper competitions surely it is
a simple affair knowing that one has
only 24 hours a day to content oneself
with 24 hours a day to you my dear sir I
present my excuses and apologies you are
precisely the man that I have been
wishing to meet for about forty years
will you kindly send me your name and
address and state your charge for
telling me how you do it instead of me
talking to you you ought to be talking
to me please come forward that you exist
I am convinced and that I have not yet
encountered you is my loss meanwhile
until you appear I will continue to chat
with my companions in distress that
innumerable band of souls who are
haunted more or less painfully are the
feeling that the years slip by and slip
by and slip by and that they have not
yet been able to get their lives into
proper working order if we analyse the
fact feeling we shall perceive it to be
primarily one of uneasiness of
expectation of looking forward of
aspiration it is a source of constant
discomfort for it behaves like a
skeleton at the feast of all our
enjoyments
we go to the theater and laugh but
between the acts it raises a skinny
finger at us we rushed violently for the
last train and while we are cooling a
long age on the platform waiting for the
last train it promenade sits bones up
and down by our side and in choirs oh
man
what has mm with my youth what are
thoooose I neg you may urge that this
feeling of continuous looking forward of
aspiration is a part of life itself and
inseparable from life itself true but
there are degrees a man may desire to go
to Mecca his conscience tells him that
he ought to go to Mecca he fairs forth
either by the aid of cooks or unassisted
he may probably never reach Mecca he may
drown before he gets to ports aid he may
perish in gloriously on the coast of the
Red Sea
his desire may remain eternally
frustrate unfulfilled aspiration may
always trouble him but he will not be
tormented in the same way as the man who
desiring to reach Mecca and harried by
the desire to reach Mecca never leaves
Brixton it is something to have left
Brixton most of us have not left Brixton
we have not even taken a cab to LUT gate
circus and inquired from cooks the price
of a conducted tour and our excuse to
ourselves is that there are only 24
hours in a day if we further analyze our
vague uneasy aspiration we shall I think
see that it Springs from a fixed idea
that we ought to do something in
addition to those things which we are
loyally and morally obligated to do we
are obliged by various codes written and
on
written to maintain ourselves and our
families if any in health and comfort to
pay our debts to save to increase our
prosperity by increasing our efficiency
a task sufficiently difficult a task
which very few of us achieve a task
often beyond our skills yet if we
succeed in it as we sometimes do we are
not satisfied the skeleton is still with
us and even when we realize that the
task is beyond our skill that our powers
cannot cope with it we feel that we
should be less discontented if we gave
to our powers already overtaxed
something still further to do and such
is indeed the fact the wish to
accomplish something outside their
formal program is common to all men who
in the course of evolution have risen
past a certain level until an effort is
made to satisfy that wish the sense of
uneasy waiting for something to start
which has not started will remain to
disturb the peace of the soul that wish
has been called by many names it is one
form of the universal desire for
knowledge and it is so strong that men
whose whole lives have been given to the
systematic acquirement of knowledge have
been driven by it to overstep the limits
of their program in search of still more
knowledge even Herbert Spencer in my
opinion the greatest mind that ever
lived was often forced by it into
agreeable little back waters of inquiry
I imagine that in the majority of people
who are conscious of the wish to live
that is to say people who have
intellectual curiosity the aspiration to
exceed formal programmes takes a
literary shape they would like to embark
on a course of reading decidedly the
British people are becoming more and
more literary
but I would point out that literature by
no means comprises the whole feel of
knowledge and that the disturbing thirst
to improve oneself to increase one's
knowledge may well be slaked quite apart
from literature with the various ways of
slacking I shall deal later here I
merely point out to those who have no
natural sympathy with literature that
literature is not the only well end of
chapter 2
yup how to live on 24 hours a day by
Arnold Bennett this LibriVox recording
is in the public domain Chapter three
precautions before beginning now that I
have succeeded if succeeded I have in
persuading you to admit to yourself that
you are constantly haunted by a
suppressed dissatisfaction with your own
arrangement of your daily life and that
the primal cause of that inconvenient
dissatisfaction is the feeling that you
are everyday leaving undone something
which you would like to do and which
indeed you are always hoping to do when
you have more time and now that I have
drawn your attention to the glaring
dazzling truth that you never will have
more time since you already have all the
time there is you expect me to let you
into some wonderful secret by which you
may at any rate approach the ideal of a
perfect arrangement of the day and by
which therefore that haunting unpleasant
daily disappointment of things left
undone will be got rid of I have found
no such wonderful secret nor do I expect
to find it nor do I expect that anyone
else will ever find it
it is undiscovered when you first began
to gather my drift
perhaps there was a resurrection of hope
in your breast
perhaps you said to yourself this man
will show me an easy unfitting way of
doing but I have so long in vain wished
to do alas no the fact is that there is
no easy way no Royal Road the path to
Mecca is extremely hard and stony and
the worst of it is that you never quite
get there after all the most important
preliminary to the task of arranging
one's life so that one may live fully
and comfortably within
a daily budget of 24 hours it's the calm
realization of the extreme difficulty of
the task of the sacrifices and the
endless effort which it demands
I cannot too strongly insist on this if
you imagine that you will be able to
achieve your ideal by ingeniously
planning out a timetable with a pen on a
piece of paper you had better give up
hope at once if you are not prepared for
discouragements and disillusions if you
will not be content with a small result
for a big effort then do not begin lie
down again and resume the uneasy doze
which you call your existence it is very
sad is it not very depressing and somber
and yet I think it is rather fine to
this necessity for the tense bracing of
the will before anything worth doing can
be done I rather like it myself
I feel it to be the chief thing that
differentiates me from the cat by the
fire well you say assume that I embrace
for the battle a song that I have
carefully weighed and comprehend your
ponderous remarks how do I begin
dear sir you simply begin there is no
magic method of beginning if a man
standing on the edge of a swimming bath
and wanting to jump into the cold water
should ask you how do I begin to jump as
you would merely reply just jump take
hold of your nerves and jump as I have
previously said the chief beauty about
the constant supply of time is that you
cannot waste it in advance the next year
the next day the next hour are lying
ready for you as perfect as unspoiled as
if you had never wasted or misapplied a
single moment in all your career
which fact is very gratifying and
reassuring you can turn over a new leaf
every hour if you choose therefore no
object is served in waiting till next
week
or even until tomorrow you may fancy
that the water will be warmer next week
it won't it will be colder but before
you begin let me murmur a few words of
warning in your private ear let me
principally warn you against your own
order order in well-doing
is a misleading and a treacherous thing
it cries out loudly for employment you
can't satisfy it at first it once more
and more it is eager to move mountains
and divert the course of rivers it is in
contempt till it perspires
and then too often when it feels the
preparation on its brow it we're ease
all of a sudden and dies without even
putting itself to the trouble of saying
I've had enough of this
beware of undertaking too much at the
start be content with quite a little
allow for accidents allow for human
nature especially your own a failure or
so in itself would not matter if it did
not incur a loss of self-esteem and of
self confidence but just as nothing
succeeds like success
so nothing feels like failure most
people who are ruined or ruined by
attempting too much therefore and
setting out on the immense enterprise of
living fully and comfortably within the
narrow limits of 24 hours a day let us
avoid at any cost the risk of an early
failure I will not agree that in this
business at any rate a glorious failure
is better than a petty success I am all
for the petty success a glorious failure
leads to nothing a petty success may
lead
a success that is not petty so let us
begin to examine the budget of a day's
time you say your day is already full to
overflowing how you actually spend in
earning your livelihood
how much seven hours on the average and
in actual sleep seven I will add two
hours and be generous and I will defy
you to account to me on the spur of the
moment for the other eight hours end of
chapter 3
live on 24 hours a day by Arnold Bennett
this LibriVox recording is in the public
domain chapter 4 because of the troubles
in order to come to grips at once with
the question of time expenditure in all
its actuality I must choose an
individual case for examination I can
only deal with one case and that case
cannot be the average case because there
is no such case as the average case just
as there is no such man as the average
man every man and every man's case is
special but if I take the case of a
Londoner who works in an office whose
office hours are from 10:00 to 6:00 and
who spends 50 minutes morning and night
in travelling between his house door and
his office door I shall have got as near
to the average as facts permit there are
men who have to work longer for a living
but there are others who do not have to
work so long fortunately the financial
side of existence does not interest us
here for our present purpose the clerk
at a pound a week is exactly as well-off
as the millionaire in Carlton House
Terrace now the great and profound
mistake which my typical man makes in
regard to his day is a mistake of
general attitude a mistake which
vitiates and weakens two-thirds of his
energies and interests in the majority
of instances he does not precisely feel
a passion for his business at best he
does not dislike it he begins his
business functions with reluctance as
late as he can and he ends them with joy
as early as he can and his engines while
he is engaged in his business are seldom
at their full HP I know that I shall be
accused by angry readers of troduce eing
the city worker but I am pretty
thoroughly acquainted with the city and
I stick to what I say yet in spite of
all this he
and looking upon those hours from 10:00
to 6:00 as the day to which the ten
hours preceding them and the six hours
following them are nothing but a
prologue and epilogue such an attitude
unconscious though it be of course
kills his interest in the odd 16 hours
with the result that even if he does not
waste them he does not count them he
regards them simply as margin this
general attitude is utterly illogical
and unhealthy since it formally gives
the central prominence to a patch of
time and a bunch of activities which the
man's one idea is to get through and
have done with if a man makes two thirds
of his existence subservient to one
third for which admittedly he has no
absolute feverish zest
how can he hope to live fully and
completely he cannot if my typical man
wishes to live fully and completely he
must in his mind arrange a day within a
day and this inner day a Chinese box in
a larger Chinese box must begin at 6
p.m. and end at 10 a.m. it is a day of
16 hours and during all these 16 hours
he has nothing whatever to do but
cultivate his body and his soul and his
fellow men during those 16 hours he is
free he is not a wage earner he is not
preoccupied with monetary cares he is
just as good as a man with a private
income this must be his attitude and his
attitude is all-important his success in
life much more important than the amount
of estate upon what his executor will
have to pay estate Duty depends on it
what you say that full energy given to
those 16 hours will lessen the value of
the business 8 not so on the contrary it
will assuredly increase the value of the
business eight one of the chief things
which my typical man has to learn is
that the mental faculties are capable of
a continuous hard activity they do not
tire like an arm or a leg all they want
is change not rest except in sleep I
shall now examine the typical man's
current method of employing the sixteen
hours that are entirely his beginning
with his uprising I will merely indicate
things which he does and which I think
he ought not to do postponing my
suggestions for planting the times which
I shall have cleared as a settler clear
spaces in a forest injustice to him I
must say but he wastes very little time
before he leaves the house in the
morning at 9:10 in too many houses he
gets up at 9:00 breakfast is between
nine seven and nine nine and a half and
then bolts but immediately he banks the
front door his mental faculties which
are tireless become idle he walks to the
station in a condition of mental coma
arrived there he usually has to wait for
the train on hundreds of suburban
stations every morning you see men
calmly strolling up and down platforms
while railway companies unblushing Lee
robbed them of time which is more than
money hundreds of thousands of hours are
thus lost every day simply because my
typical man thinks so little time that
it has never occurred to him to take
quite easy precautions against the risk
of its loss he has a solid coin of time
to spend every day call it a sovereign
he must get change for it and in getting
change he is content to lose heavily
supposing that in selling him a ticket
the company said we will charge you a
sovereign but we will charge you three
halfpence for doing so
what would my typical man exclaim yes
that is the equivalent of what the
company does when it robs him of five
minutes twice a day you say I am dealing
with mine you sure I am and later on I
will justify myself now will you kindly
buy your paper and step into the Train
end of chapter four
how to live on 24 hours a day by Arnold
Bennett this LibriVox recording is in
the public domain Chapter five tennis
and the immortal soul you get into the
morning train with your newspaper and
you calmly and majestically give
yourself up to your newspaper you do not
hurry you know you have at least half an
hour of security in front of you as your
glance lingers idly on the
advertisements of shipping and a songs
on the outer pages your air is the air
of a leisured man wealthy in time of a
man from some planet where there are a
hundred and twenty four-hours-a-day
instead of 24 I am an impassioned reader
of newspapers I read five English and
two French dailies and the news agents
alone know how many weeklies regularly
I'm obliged to mention this personal
fact lest I should be accused of a
prejudice against newspapers when I say
that I object to the reading of
newspapers in the morning train
newspapers are produced with rapidity to
be read with rapidity there was no place
in my daily program for newspapers I
read them as I may in odds but I do read
them the idea of devoting to them 30 or
40 consecutive minutes of wonderful
solitude for nowhere can one more
perfectly immerse oneself in oneself
then in a compartment full of silent
withdrawn smoking mails is to me
repugnant I cannot possibly allow you to
scatter priceless pearls of time with
such oriental lavishness you are not a
Shah of time let me respectfully remind
you that you have no more time than I
have no newspaper reading and trains I
have already put by about three-quarters
of an hour for use
now you reach your office and I abandon
you there till six o'clock I am aware
that you have nominally an hour often in
reality an hour and a half in the midst
of the day less than half of which time
is given to eating but I will leave you
all that to spend as you choose you may
read your newspapers then I meet you
again as you emerge from your office
your pale and tired
at any rate your wife says you are pale
and you give her to understand that you
are tired during the journey home
you have been gradually working up the
tired feeling the tired feeling hangs
heavy over the mighty suburbs of London
like a virtuous and melancholy cloud
particularly in winter you don't eat
immediately on your arrival home but in
about an hour or so you feel as if you
could sit up and take a little
nourishment and you do then you smoke
seriously
you see friends you putter you play
cards you flirt with a book you note
that old age is creeping on you take a
stroll you caress the piano by Jove a
quarter past eleven you then devote
quite forty minutes to thinking about
going to bed and it is conceivable that
you are acquainted with a genuinely good
whisky at last you go to bed exhausted
by the day's work six hours probably
more have gone since you left the office
gone like a dream gone like magic
unaccountably gone that is a fair sample
case but you say it's all very well for
you to talk a man is tired
a man must see his friends he can't
always be on the stretch justice oh but
when you arrange to go to the theatre
especially with a pretty woman what
happens you rushed to the suburbs you
spare no
toil to make yourself glorious in fine
raiment you rush back to town in another
train you keep yourself on the stretch
for four hours if not five you take her
home
you take yourself home you don't spend
three quarters of an hour in thinking
about it going to bed you go friends and
fatigue have equally been forgotten and
the evening has seemed so exquisitely
long or perhaps too short and do you
remember that time when you were
persuaded to sing in the chorus of the
amateur operatic society and slaved two
hours every other night for three months
can you deny that when you have
something definite to look forward to an
evening tide something that is to employ
all your energy the thought of that
something gives a glow and a more
intense vitality to the whole day what I
suggest is that at six o'clock you look
facts in the face and admit that you are
not tired because you are not you know
and that you arrange your evening so
that it is not cut in the middle by a
meal by so doing you will have a clear
expanse of at least three hours I do not
suggest that you should employ three
hours every night of your life and using
up your mental energy but I do suggest
that you might for a commencement employ
an hour and they have every other
evening in some important and
consecutive cultivation of the mind you
will still be left with three evenings
for friends bridge tennis domestic
scenes odd reading pipes gardening
pottering and prize competitions you
will still have the terrific wealth of
forty-five hours between 2 p.m. Saturday
and 10 a.m. Monday if you persevere you
will soon want to pass for evenings and
perhaps 5 in some sustained endeavour to
be genuinely alive and you will fall out
of the
habit of muttering to yourself at 11:15
p.m. time to be thinking about going to
bed
the man who begins to go to bed 40
minutes before he opens his bedroom door
is bored that is to say he is not living
but remember at the start those 90
nocturnal minutes thrice a week must be
the most important minutes in the 10,080
they must be sacred quite as sacred as a
dramatic rehearsal or a tennis match
instead of saying sorry I can't see you
old chap but I have to run off to the
Tennis Club you must say but I have to
work this I admit is intensely difficult
to say tennis is so much more urgent
than the immortal soul end of chapter 5
six of how to live on 24 hours a day by
Arnold Bennett this LibriVox recording
is in the public domain Chapter six
remember human nature I have
incidentally mentioned the vast expanse
of forty-four hours between leaving
business at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday and
returning to business at 10:00 a.m. on
Monday and here I must touch on the
point whether the week should consist of
6 days or of seven for many years in
fact until I was approaching 40 my own
week consisted of seven days I was
constantly being informed by older and
wiser people that more work more genuine
living could be got out of six days that
out of seven and it is certainly true
that now with one day in seven in which
I follow no program and make no effort
save what the Caprice of the moment
dictates I appreciate intensely the
moral value of a weekly rest
nevertheless at I my life to arrange
over again I would do again as I have
done only those who have lived at the
full stretch seven days a week for a
long time can appreciate the full beauty
of a regular recurring idleness moreover
I am aging and it is a question of age
in cases of abounding youth and
exceptional energy and desire for effort
I should say unhesitatingly keep going
day in day out but in the average case I
should say confine your formal program
super program I mean to six days a week
if you find yourself wishing to extend
it extend it but only in proportion to
your wish and count the time extra as a
windfall not as regular income so that
you can return to a six-day program
without the sensation of being poorer of
being a backslider
let us now see where we stand so far we
have marked for saving out of the waste
of days half an hour at least on six
morning's a week and one hour and a half
on three evenings a week total seven
hours and a half a week I proposed to be
content with that seven hours and a half
for the present what you cry you pretend
to show us how to live and you only deal
with seven hours and a half out of 868
are you going to perform a miracle with
your seven hours and a half well not two
men semadar I am if you will kindly let
me that is to say I'm going to ask you
to attempt and experience which while
perfectly natural and explicable as all
the air of a miracle my contention is
that the full use of those seven and a
half hours will quicken the whole life
of the week add zest to it and increase
the interest which you feel in even the
most banal occupations you practice
physical exercises for a mere ten
minutes morning and evening and yet you
are not astonished when your physical
health and stress are beneficially
affected every hour of the day and your
whole physical outlook changed why
should you be astonished that an average
of over an hour a day given to the mind
should permanently and completely
enliven the whole activity of the mind
more time might assuredly be given to
the cultivation of oneself and in
proportion as the time was longer the
results would be greater but I prefer to
begin with what looks like a trifling
effort it is not really a trifling
effort as those will discover who have
yet to essay it to clear even seven
hours and a half from the jungle is
passably difficult for some sacrifice
has to be made one may have spent one's
time badly but one did spend it one did
do something with it
however ill-advised that something may
have been to do something else means a
change of habits and habits are the very
Dickens to change further any change
even a change for the better is always
accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts
if you imagine that you will be able to
devote seven hours and a half a week to
serious continuous effort and still live
your old life you are mistaken
I repeat that some sacrifice and an
immense deal of volition will be
necessary and it is because I know the
difficulty it is because I know the
almost disastrous effect of failure in
such an enterprise that I earnestly
advise a very humble beginning you must
safeguard your self-respect self-respect
is at the root of all purposefulness and
a failure in an enterprise deliberately
planned deals a desperate wound at one's
self respect hence I iterate and
reiterate start quietly unintentionally
when you have conscientiously given
seven hours and a half a week to the
cultivation of your vitality for three
months then you may begin to sing louder
and tell yourself what wondrous things
you are capable of doing before coming
to the method of using the indicated
hours I have one final suggestion to
make that is as regards the evenings to
allow much more than an hour and a half
in which to do the work of an hour and a
half remember the chance of accidents
remember human nature and give yourself
say from 9:00 to 11:30 for your task of
90 minutes end of chapter 6
to live on 24 hours a day by Arnold
Bennett this LibriVox recording is in
the public domain chapter seven
controlling the mind people say one
can't help one's thoughts but one can
the control of the thinking machine is
perfectly possible and since nothing
whatever happens to us outside our own
brain since nothing hurts us or gives us
pleasure except within the brain the
supreme importance of being able to
control what goes on in that mysterious
brain is patent the idea is one of the
oldest platitudes but it is a platitude
whose profound truth and urgency most
people live and die without realizing
people complain of a lack of power to
concentrate not witting that they may
acquire the power if they choose and
without the power to concentrate that is
to say without the power to dictate to
the brain its task and to ensure
obedience true life is impossible mind
control is the first element of a full
existence hence it seems to me the first
business of the day should be to put the
mind through its paces you look after
your body inside and out you run grave
danger in hacking hairs off your face
you employ a whole army of individuals
from the milkman to the pig to killer to
enable you to bribe your stomach into
decent behavior why not devote a little
attention to the for more delicate
machinery of the mind especially as you
will require no extraneous aid it is for
this portion of the art and craft of
living that I have reserved the time
from the moment of quitting your door to
the moment of arriving at your office
what am I to cultivate my mind in the
street on the platform in the train and
in the crowded street again precisely
nothing simpler no tools required not a
in a book nevertheless the affair is not
easy when you leave your house
concentrate your mind on a subject no
matter what to begin with you will not
have gone 10 yards before your mind has
skipped away under your very eyes and is
Larkin round the corner with another
subject bring it back by the scruff of
the neck ere you have reached the
station you will have brought it back
about 40 times do not despair continue
keep it up you will succeed you cannot
by any chance fail if you persevere it
is idle to pretend that your mind is
incapable of concentration do you
remember that morning when you receive a
disquieting letter which demanded a very
carefully worded answer how you kept
your mind steadily on the subject of the
answer without a seconds intermission
until you reached your office whereupon
you instantly sat down and wrote the
answer that was a case in which you were
roused by circumstances to such a degree
of vitality that you were able to
dominate your mind like a tyrant you
would have no trifling you insisted that
its work should be done and its work was
done by the regular practice of
concentration as to which there is no
secret save the secret of perseverance
you can Terran eyes over your mind which
is not the highest part of you every
hour of the day and in no matter what
place the exercise is a very convenient
one if you get into your morning train
with a pair of dumbbells for your
muscles or and encyclopaedia in ten
volumes for your learning you would
probably excite remarked but as you walk
in the street or sit in the corner of
the compartment behind a pipe or strap
hang on the subterranean who is to know
that you were engaged in the most
important of daily acts what asinine
boor can laugh at
I do not care what you concentrate on so
long as you concentrate it is the mayor
disciplining of the thinking machine
that counts but still you may as well
kill two birds with one stone
and to concentrate on something useful I
suggest it is only a suggestion a little
chapter of marcus aurelius or epictetus
do not I beg shy at their names for
myself I know nothing more actual more
bursting with playing common sense
applicable to the daily life of plain
persons like you and me who hey dere is
suppose and nonsense then marcus
aurelius or epictetus read a chapter and
so short they are the chapters in the
evening and concentrate on it the next
morning you will see yes my friend it is
useless for you to try to disguise the
fact I can hear your brain like a
telephone at my ear you are saying to
yourself this fellow was doing pretty
well up to his seventh chapter he had
begun to interest me faintly but what he
says about thinking in trains and
concentration and so on is not for me it
may be well enough for some folks but it
isn't in my line it is for you I
passionately repeat it is for you indeed
you are the very man I am aiming at
throw away the suggestion and you throw
away the most precious suggestion that
was ever offered to you it is not my
suggestion it is the suggestion of the
most sensible practical hard-headed men
who have walked the earth I only give it
to you at secondhand try it get your
mind in hand and see how the process
cures half the evils of life especially
worry that miserable avoidable shameful
disease worry end of chapter 7
you
to live on 24 hours a day by Arnold
Bennett this LibriVox recording is in
the public domain chapter 8 the
reflective mood the exercise of
concentrating the mind to which at least
half an hour a day should be given is a
mere preliminary like scales on the
piano having acquired power over that
most unruly member of one's complex
organism one has naturally to put it to
the yoke useless to possess an obedient
mind unless one profits in the farthest
possible degree by its obedience a
prolonged primary course of study is
indicated now as to what this course of
study should be there cannot be any
question there never has been any
question all the sensible people of all
ages are agreed upon it and it is not
literature nor is it any other art nor
is it history nor is it any science it
is the study of one's self man know
thyself these words are so hackneyed
that verily I've blushed to write them
yet they must be written for they need
to be written I take back my blush being
ashamed of it men know thyself I say it
out loud
the phrase is one of those phrases with
which everyone is familiar of which
everyone acknowledges the value and
which only the most sagacious put into
practice I don't know why I am entirely
convinced that what is more than
anything else lacking in the life of the
average well-intentioned man of today is
the reflective mood we do not reflect I
mean that we do not reflect upon
genuinely important things upon the
problem of our happiness upon the main
direction in which we are going upon
what life is giving to us upon the share
which reason has or has not
in determining our actions and upon the
relation between our principles and our
conduct and yet you are in search of
happiness are you not have you
discovered it the chances are that you
have not the chances are that you have
already come to believe that happiness
is unattainable
but men have attained it and they have
attained it by realizing that happiness
does not spring from the procuring of
physical or mental pleasure but from the
development of reason and the adjustment
of conduct to principles I suppose that
you will not have the audacity to deny
us and if you admit it and still devote
no part of your day to the deliberate
consideration of your reason principles
and conduct you admit also that while
striving for a certain thing you are
regularly leaving undone the one act
which is necessary to the attainment of
that thing now shall I blush or will you
do not fear that I mean to thrust
certain principles upon your attention I
care not in this place what your
principles are your principles may
induce you to believe in the
righteousness of burglary I don't mind
all I urge is that a life in which
conduct does not fairly well accord with
principles is a silly life and that
conduct can only be made to accord with
principles by means of daily examination
reflection and resolution what leads to
the permanent sorrowful nosov burglars
is that their principles are contrary to
burglary if they genuinely believed in
the moral excellence of burglary penal
servitude would simply mean so many
happy years for them all martyrs are
happy because their conduct and their
principles agree as for a reason which
makes conduct and is not unconnected
with the making of principles it plays a
farce
or apart in our lives than we fancy we
are supposed to be reasonable but we are
much more instinctive than reasonable
and the less we reflect the less
reasonable we shall be the next time you
get cross with the waiter because your
steak is overcooked ask a reason to step
into the Cabinet Room of your mind and
consult her she will probably tell you
that the waiter did not cook the steak
and has no control over the cooking of
the steak and that even if he alone was
to blame you accomplished nothing good
by getting cross you merely lost your
dignity looked a fool in the eyes of
sensible men and soured the waiter while
producing no effect whatever on the
steak the result of this consultation
with reason for which she makes no
charge will be that when once more your
steak is overcooked you will treat the
waiter as a fellow-creature remain quite
calm in a kindly spirit and politely
insist on having a freshest take the
gain will be obvious and solid in the
formation or modification of principles
and the practice of conduct much help
can be derived from printed books issued
at sixpence each and upwards I mentioned
in my last chapter Marcus Aurelius and
Epictetus certain even more widely known
works will occur at once to the memory I
may also mention Pascal Liguria and
Emerson for myself you do not catch me
travelling without my Marcus Aurelius
but reading a books will not take the
place of a daily candid honest
examination of what one has recently
done and what one is about to do of a
study looking at oneself in the face
disconcerting though the site may be
when shall this important business be
accomplished the solitude of the evening
journey home appears to me to be
suitable for
a reflective mood naturally follows the
exertion of having earned the day's
living of course if instead of attending
to an elementary and profoundly
important duty you prefer to read the
paper which you might just as well read
while waiting for your dinner I have
nothing to say but attend to at some
time of the day you must I now come
through the evening hours end of chapter
8
of how to live on 24 hours a day by
Arnold Bennett
this LibriVox recording is in the public
domain
chapter 9 interest in the arts many
people pursue a regular and
uninterrupted course of idleness in the
evenings because they think that there
is no alternative to idleness but the
study of literature and they do not
happen to have a taste for literature
this is a great mistake of course it is
impossible or any rate very difficult
properly to study anything whatever
without the aid of printed books but if
you desire to understand the deeper
depths of bridge or of a boat sailing
you would not be deterred by your lack
of interest in literature from reading
the best books on bridge or boat sailing
we must therefore distinguish between
literature and books trading of subjects
not literary I shall come to literature
in due course let me now remark to those
who have never read meredith and who
were capable of being unmoved by a
discussion as to whether mr. Steven
Phillips is or is not a true poet that
they are perfectly within their rights
it is not a crime not to love literature
it is not a sign of imbecility the
mandarins of literature will order out
to instant execution the unfortunate
individual who does not comprehend say
the influences of Wordsworth on Tennyson
but that is only their impudence where
would they be I wonder if requested to
explain the influences that went to make
Tchaikovsky's pathetic symphony there
are enormous fields of knowledge quite
outside literature which will yield
making nificent results to cultivators
for example since I have just mentioned
the most popular piece of high-class
music in England today I am reminded
that the promenade concerts begin in
August you go to them you smoke your
cigar
or cigarette and I regret to say that
you strike your matches during the soft
bars of the Lohengrin overture and you
enjoy the music but you say you cannot
play the piano or the fiddle or even the
banjo that you know nothing of music
what does that matter that you have a
genuine taste for music is proved by the
fact that in order to fill his Hall with
you and your peers the conductor is
obliged to provide programs from which
bad music is almost entirely excluded a
change from the old Covent Garden days
now surely your inability to perform the
Maiden's prayer on a piano need not
prevent you from making yourself
familiar with the construction of the
orchestra to which you listen a couple
of nights a week during a couple of
months as things are you probably think
of the orchestra as a heterogeneous mass
of instruments producing a confused
agreeable mass of sound you do not
listen for details because you have
never trained your ears to listen to
details if you were asked to name the
instruments which play the great theme
at the beginning of the C minor symphony
you could not name them for your life's
sake yet you admire the C minor symphony
it has thrilled you it will thrill you
again you have even talked about it in
an expansive mood to that lady you know
whom I mean and all you can positively
state about the C minor symphony is that
Beethoven composed it and that it is a
jolly fine thing now if you have read
say mister equivalent to music which can
be got at any booksellers for less than
the price of a stall at the Alhambra and
which contains photographs of all the
orchestral instruments and plans of the
arrangement of orchestras
you would next go to a promenade concert
with an astonishing intensification of
interest in it instead of a confuse
to mass the orchestra would appear to
you as what it is a marvelously balanced
organism whose various groups of members
each have a different end and
indispensable function you would spy out
the instruments and listen for their
respective sounds you would know the
Gulf that separates a French horn from
an English horn and you would perceive
why a player of the Haute boy gets
higher wages than a fiddler though the
fiddle is the more difficult instrument
you would live at a promenade concert
whereas previously you had merely
existed there in a state of beatific
coma like a baby gazing at a bright
object the foundations of a genuine
systematic knowledge of music might be
laid you might specialize your inquiries
either on a particular form of music
such as the symphony or on the works of
a particular composer at the end of a
year of 48 weeks of three brief evenings
each combined with a study of programs
and attendances at concerts chosen out
of your increasing knowledge you would
really know something about music even
though you were as far off as ever from
jangling the maidens prayer on the piano
but I hate music you say my dear sir I
respect you what applies to music
applies to the other arts I might
mention mr. Claremont Wits how to look
at pictures or mr. Russell sturgis's how
to judge architecture as beginnings
merely beginnings of systematic
vitalizing knowledge in other arts the
materials for whose study abound in
London I hate all the arts you say my
dear sir I respect you more and more I
will deal with your case next before
coming to literature
end of chapter 9 of how to live on 24
hours a day by Arnold Bennett this
LibriVox recording is in the public
domain chapter 10 nothing in life is
humdrum art is a great thing but it is
not the greatest the most important of
all perceptions is the continual
perception of cause and effect in other
words the perception of the continuous
development of the universe in still
other words the perception of the course
of evolution when one has thoroughly got
imbued into one's head the leading truth
that nothing happens without a cause one
grows not only large minded but large
hearted it is hard to have one's watch
stolen but one reflects that the thief
of the watch became a thief from causes
of heredity and environment which are as
interesting as they are scientifically
comprehensible and one buys another
watch if not with joy at any rate with a
philosophy that makes bitterness
impossible one loses in the study of
cause-and-effect that absurd air which
so many people have of being always
shocked and pained by the curiousness of
life such people live amid human nature
as if human nature were a foreign
country full of awful foreign customs
but having reached maturity one ought
surely to be ashamed of being a stranger
in a strange land
the study of cause and effect while it
lessens the painfulness of life adds to
life's picturesqueness the man to whom
evolution is but a name looks at the sea
as a grandiose monotonous spectacle
which he can witness
in August for three shillings
third-class returned the man who is
imbued with the idea of development of
continuous cause and effect perceives in
the sea and element which in the day
before yesterday of geology was vapor
which yesterday was boiling and which
tomorrow will inevitably be ice he
perceives that he liquid is merely
something on its way to be solid and he
is penetrated by a sense of the
tremendous changeful picturesqueness of
life
nothing will afford a more durable
satisfaction than the constantly
cultivated appreciation of this it is
the end of all science cause-and-effect
are to be found everywhere rents went up
in Shepherds Bush it was painful and
shocking that rinses should go up in
Shepherds Bush but to a certain point we
are all scientific students of
cause-and-effect and there was not a
clerk lunching at lions restaurant who
did not scientifically put two and two
together
and see in the once twopenny tube the
cause of an excessive demand for wigwams
in Shepherds Bush and the excessive
demand for wigwams the cause of the
increase in the price of wigwams simple
you say disdainfully everything the
whole complex movement of the universe
is as simple as that when you can
sufficiently put two and two together
and my dear sir perhaps you happen to be
an estate agents clerk and you hate the
arts and you want to foster your
immortal soul and you can't be
interested in your business because it's
so humdrum nothing is humdrum the
tremendous changeful picturesqueness of
life is marvelously shown in an estate
agents office what there was a block of
traffic in Oxford Street to avoid the
block people actually began to travel
under the sellers and
reigns and the result was a rise of
rents in Shepherds Bush and you say that
isn't picturesque suppose you were to
study in this spirit the property
question in London for an hour and a
half every other evening
would it not give zest to your business
and transform your whole life you would
arrive at more difficult problems and
you would be able to tell us why as the
natural result of cause and effect
the longest straight street in London is
about a yard and a half and lift while
the longest absolutely straight Street
in Paris extends for miles I think you
will admit that in an estate agents
Clerk I have not chosen an example that
especially favours my theories you are a
bank clerk and you have not read that
breathless romance disguised as a
scientific study Walter
Beckett's Lombard Street DA My dear sir
if you had begun with that and followed
it up for 90 minutes every other evening
how enthralling your business would be
to you and how much more clearly you
would understand human nature you are
pinned in town but you love excursions
to the country and the observation of
wildlife certainly a hard enlarging
diversion why don't you walk out of your
house door in your slippers to the
nearest gas lamp of a night with a
butterfly net and observe the wildlife
of common and rare moths that is beating
about it and coordinate the knowledge
thus obtained and build a superstructure
on it and at last get to know something
about something you need not be devoted
to the arts not to literature in order
to live fully the whole field of daily
habit and scene is waiting to satisfy
that curiosity which means life and the
satisfaction of which means an
understanding heart I promised to deal
with your case o man who hates art and
literature
and I have dealt with it I now come to
the case of the person happily very
common who does like reading end of
chapter 10
even of how to live on 24 hours a day by
Arnold Bennett this LibriVox recording
is in the public domain
Chapter eleven serious reading novels
are excluded from serious reading so
that the man who bent on self
improvement has been deciding to devote
ninety minutes three times a week to a
complete study of the works of Charles
Dickens will be well advised to alter
his plans the reason is not that novels
are not serious some of the great
literature of the world is in the form
of prose fiction the reason is that bad
novels ought not to be read and that
good novels never demand any appreciable
mental application on the part of the
reader it is only the bad parts of
Meredith's novels that are difficult a
good novel rushes you forward like a
skiff down a stream and you arrive at
the end perhaps breathless but
unexhausted the best novels involve the
least strain now in the cultivation of
the mind one of the most important
factors is precisely the feeling of
strain of difficulty of a task which one
part of you is anxious to achieve and
another part of you is anxious to shirk
and that feeling cannot be God in facing
a novel you do not set your teeth in
order to read on a Karenina therefore
though you should read novels you should
not read them in those 90 minutes
imaginative poetry produces a far
greater mental strain than novels it
produces probably the severus strain of
any form of literature it is the highest
form of literature it yields the highest
form of pleasure and teaches the highest
form of wisdom in a word there is
nothing to compare with it I say this
with sad consciousness of the fact that
the majority of people do not read
poetry
I am persuaded that many excellent
persons if they were confronted with the
alternatives of reading Paradise Lost
and going round Trafalgar Square at
noonday on their knees in sackcloth
would choose the ordeal of public
ridicule still I will never cease
advising my friends and enemies to read
poetry before anything the if the poetry
is what is called a sealed book to you
begin by reading Hazlitt's famous essay
on the nature of poetry in general it is
the best thing of its kind in English
and no one who has read it can possibly
be under the misapprehension that poetry
is a medieval torture or a mad elephant
or a gun that will go off by itself and
kill at 40 paces indeed it is difficult
to imagine the mental state of the man
who after reading Hazlitt's essay it's
not urgently desirous of reading some
poetry before his next meal if the essay
so inspires you I would suggest that you
make a commencement with purely
narrative poetry there is an infinitely
finer English novel written by a woman
that anything by George Eliot or the
Bronte's or even Jane Austen which
perhaps you have not read its title is
Aurora Lee and its author is EB browning
it happens to be written in verse and to
contain a considerable amount of
genuinely fine poetry decide to read
that book through even if you die for it
forget that it is fine poetry read it
simply for the story and the social
ideas and when you have done ask
yourself honestly whether you still
dislike poetry I have known more than
one person to whom Aurora Lee has been
the means of proving that in assuming
they hated poetry they were entirely
mistaken of course if after hazlit and
such an experiment made in the light of
hazlit you are finally assured that
there is something in you which is in
tag
stick to poetry you must be content with
history or philosophy
I shall regret it yet not inconsolably
the decline and fall is not to be named
in the same day with Paradise Lost but
it is a vastly pretty thing and Herbert
Spencer's first principles simply laughs
at the claims of poetry and refuses to
be accepted as ought but the most
majestic product of any human mind I do
not suggest that either of these works
is suitable for a trial in mental
strains but I see no reason why any man
of average intelligence should not after
a year of continuous reading be fit to
assault of the supreme masterpieces of
history or philosophy the great
convenience of masterpieces is that they
are so astonishingly lucid I suggest no
particular work as a start the attempt
would be futile in the space of my
command but I have two general
suggestions of a certain importance the
first is to define the direction and
scope of your efforts
choose a limited period or a limited
subject or a single author say to
yourself I will know something about the
French Revolution or the rise of
railroads are the works of John Keats
and during a given period to be settled
beforehand confine yourself to your
choice there is much pleasure to be
derived from being a specialist the
second suggestion is to think as well as
read
I know people who read and read and for
all the good it does them they might
just as well cut bread-and-butter they
take to reading as better men take to
drink they fly through the Shires of
literature on a motor car their sole
object being motion they will tell you
how many books they have read in a year
unless you give at least 45 minutes to
careful fatiguing reflection it is an
awful bore
first up on what you are reading you're
19 minutes of a night are chiefly wasted
this means that your pace will be slow
never mind forget the goal think only of
a surrounding country and after a period
perhaps when you least expect it you
will suddenly find yourself in a lovely
town on a hill end of chapter 11
twelve of how to live on 24 hours a day
by Arnold Bennett this LibriVox
recording is in the public domain
chapter 12 dangers to avoid I cannot
terminate these hints often I fear too
didactic and abrupt upon the full use of
one's time to the great end of living as
distinguished from vegetating without
briefly referring to certain dangers
which lie in wait for the sincere
aspirant towards life the first is the
terrible danger of becoming the most
odious and least supportable of persons
a prig now a prig is a portaloo who
gives himself airs of superior wisdom a
prig is a pompous fool who has gone out
for a ceremonial walk and without
knowing it has lost an important part of
his attire namely his sense of humor a
prig is a tedious individual who having
made a discovery is so impressed by his
discovery that he is capable of being
gravely displeased because the entire
world is not also impressed by it
unconsciously to become a prig is an
easy and a fatal thing hence when one
sets forth on the enterprise of using
all one's time it is just as well to
remember that one's own time and not
other people's time is the material with
which one has to deal that the earth
rolled on pretty comfortably before one
began to balance a budget of the hours
and that it will continue to roll on
pretty comfortably whether or not one
succeeds in one's new role of Chancellor
of the Exchequer of time it is as well
not to chatter too much about what one
is doing and not to betray a to paint
sadness at the spectacle of a whole
world deliberately wasting so many hours
out of every day and therefore never
really living
it will be found ultimately that in
taking care of oneself one has quite all
one can do another danger is the danger
of being tied to a program like a slave
to a chariot once program must not be
allowed to run away with one it must be
respected but it must not be worshipped
as a fetish a program of daily employ is
not a religion this seems obvious yet I
know men whose lives are a burden to
themselves and it distressing burden to
their relatives and friends simply
because they have failed to appreciate
the obvious oh no I have heard the
martyrs wife exclaim Arthur always takes
the dog out for exercise at 8 o'clock
and he always begins to read at a
quarter to nine so it's quite out of the
question that we should etc etc and the
note of absolute finality in that
plaintive voice reveals the unsuspected
and ridiculous tragedy of a career on
the other hand a program is a program
and unless it is treated with deference
it ceases to be anything but a poor joke
to treat ones program with exactly the
right amount of deference to live with
not too much and not too little
elasticity is scarcely the simple affair
it may appear to the inexperienced and
still another danger is the danger of
developing a policy of rush of being
gradually more and more obsessed by what
one has to do next in this way one may
come to exist as in a prison and one's
life may cease to be one's own one may
take the dog out for a walk at eight o
clock and meditate the whole time on the
fact that one must begin to read at a
quarter to nine and that one must not be
late and the occasional deliberate
breaking of one's program will not help
to mend matters
the evil Springs not from persisting
without elasticity in what one has
attempted but from originally attempting
too much from filling once program cell
it runs over the only cure is to
reconstitute the program and to attempt
less but the appetite for knowledge
grows by what it feeds on and there are
men who come to like a constant
breathless hurry of endeavor of them it
may be said that a constant breathless
re is better than any ternal doze in any
case if the programme exhibits a
tendency to be oppressive and yet one
wishes not to modify it an excellent
palliative is to pass with exaggerated
deliberateness from one portion of it to
another for example to spend five
minutes in perfect mental quiescence
between chaining up the st. Bernard and
opening the Booker in other words to
waste five minutes with the entire
consciousness of wasting them the last
and chiefest danger which I would
indicate is one to which I have already
referred the risk of a failure at the
commencement of the enterprise I must
insist on it a failure at the
commencement it may easily kill outright
the new-born impulse toward a complete
vitality and therefore every precaution
should be observed to avoid it the
impulse must not be overtaxed let the
pace of the first lap be even absurdly
slow but let it be as regular as
possible and having once decided to
achieve a certain task achieve it at all
costs of tedium and distaste the gain is
self-confidence of having accomplished a
tiresome labor is immense
finally in choosing the first
occupations of those evening hours be
guided by nothing whatever but your
taste and natural inclination it is a
fine thing to be a walking encyclopedia
but if you happen to have no liking for
philosophy and to have a like for the
natural history of street cries much
better leave philosophy alone and take
to street cries into Chapter twelve end
of how to live on 24 hours a day by
Arnold Bennett this book recorded by
Phil Chenevert
