How to Live on 24 Hours a Day: The Original Guide to Living Life to the Full

By Arnold Bennet

Read the original guide to living life to the full and making every hour count in this classic twentieth-century self-help style volume. As you look back on the year that has just past, do you feel as though you spent another twelve months merely existing instead of truly living? Do you often go to bed at night with an anxious, sinking feeling that you wasted away another precious day? Originally published in 1910 and written by Arnold Bennett, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day argues time is the most precious resource you have and offers down-to-earth, practical advice about how to make the most of your day and how to strike the work life balance - an issue still at the forefront of modern society's concerns. The important lesson, according to Bennett, is to commit to carving out some time each day to do things that will really enrich your life and help you progress. Investing all your hours in a job you dislike; your routine consisting of getting up, going to work, coming home, unwinding and going to bed - Bennett argues that this is not living but simply existing. Bennett's solution is to make the most of the time either side of working hours, the commute, the evening hours, and that golden time, the weekend! Time can be spent in various pursuits, from literature, enjoying of the arts or even just time spent in reflection. This pioneering and original lifestyle and time management guide is succinctly and cleverly written in an easy-to-read and narrative style that readers will enjoy and find as useful today as it was a hundred years ago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hesperus Press Ltd.
• Release date: Jan 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781780944432

Reviews for How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

[kevn57-163679 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dr George Sheehan turned me on to this interesting book, in his book about running. It's very zen for it day.

[rajivc_18 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a beautiful little book. It's pithy, blunt and eminently practical. The lessons in the book are extremely valuable today. I will buy the print version as soon as possible

[margaretfield · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

really, a serious attempt to provide tips for getting more out of your 24 hours; very 1908 intensity

[madepercy-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book shows some signs of age in its racist and sexist (gendered) language, but if we can accept the less-developed aspects of the times and focus on what is good, this book (or more accurately, books) will give the reader an immediate benefit if one is only willing to give Arnold Bennett's methods a try. This self-help book predates Dale Carnegie by a few years. If one were to sum-up Bennett hastily, I would say he was England's Dale Carnegie. Bennett received criticism from the likes of Virginia Woolf for his novels, but after one reading and implementing two of his ideas, I am hooked.

[2wondery_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not nearly as enjoyable as his fiction, is right. He veers close to sounding like the prig he derides in the last chapter. Still, worth a quick read, comparing self to the standard he is setting.

[wonderperson · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Well written skepticism about how to live 24 hours a day by the magnificent Arnold Bennett. Good writing is the cornerstone of all good literature.

[courteous-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Refreshing way of looking at the 'normal life' (the rat race), packed with memorable quotes, and a delightful audiobook-companion while planting a fig tree.

[kaethe_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am not normally drawn to philosophy, which seems to me, like religion, to get caught up in eddies of meaningless dispute. Nor am I drawn to self-help, which seems to be one or two good sentences surrounded by a tremendous amount of padding. Sometimes, not even one good sentence. Anyway, I had gotten the idea that this was funny (I don't know where I came by that idea), so that's why I started it. "It'll make a nice little palate cleanser," I thought.

Ha! This is brilliant stuff. Okay, Bennett was clearly a product of his time, and he's writing rather pointedly to a white, middle-class adult male, working in the City. The premise is straightforward: sure, you probably hate your job, but that's only 40 hours out of your week. If you really wanted to, you could devote some serious time to thinking. About anything really. Books are good (Bennett likes poetry and essays, but considers novels to be to easy if they're written well). But there's also music, and history, and the natural sciences. They're all good, too.

In 1912 college education was still pretty restricted. Public schools, lecture series, libraries, the mass publishing of books were among some of the many ways intended to improve the common people. Bennett isn't particular, he doesn't care what people devote themselves to as long as it is an intellectual hobby. He doesn't care much for your body, although you're welcome to give it some exercise now and then. Crafts won't do, you understand. He doesn't want you to take up playing an instrument, we wants you to take up music appreciation.

Really, Bennett wants you to blog. He wants you to develop a narrow fascination with something specific, learn everything about it that you can, and devote time to really thinking about it; there's no better thinking that, as he mentions, preparing to write on a topic. From this effort, Bennett assures you, will derive numerous benefits in life enjoyment and a decrease in boredom. So, get to work blogging or reviewing: it'll make you a better man.*

Seriously, I do think it would be a good idea to make this required reading in high school, followed by in depth discussion. For most people, whatever satisfaction they derive from work, it isn't the main focus of happiness. For most of us it is the time spent gardening, or reading, or solving sudoku, or building trains, or directing community theater, or blogging about hideous cakes; that is what *really* satisfies us. Growing up, we are constantly asked what kind of job do we want to have, but "bureaucrat", though necessary, isn't defining. Maybe we should be clearer on that.


* Woman doesn't enter into it. Women are presumably too busy taking care of all the other stuff that needs to happen in order for the men to be free to pursue intellectualism.

[edwinbcn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Arnold Bennett was a very prolific writer, perhaps the most successful Edwardian author. He was a self-made man, originally from very humble origins. His success and self-confidence led him to the conviction that he could often do things better than other. At the height of his career he published a number of non-fictional works advising readers how to improve themselves.[Bennett wrote two guides for aspiring writers: [How to Become an Author] in 1903, and The Author's Craft in 1913. His own credo about authorship was expressed as follows: "Am I to sit still and see other fellows pocketing two guineas apiece for stories which I can do better myself?"He also wrote several books advising common people on how to improve themselves. These range from titles such as Self and Self-Management, Mental Efficiency, to guides on developing literary taste (Literary Taste: How to Form It ) and how to change one's life-style in such a way that the emerging class of white-collar workers might make more of life. The most well-known, and still read, of these is How to Live on 24 Hours a Day. This short work may be so popular still because it is so recognizable and so practical. Everyone wastes time doing nothing, which could in a very simple manner be turned into time well spent. By getting up a bit earlier, and systematically devoting increasing amounts of time, up to an hour and a half each evening to reading Great Literature, rather than the newspaper, improve self-discipline, reflect on life and on the Great Literature one has read, and develop an interest in art, etc, anyone can improve and rise above themselves.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A somewhat sententious analysis of how time seems simply to evaporate in modern life (written about 100 years ago). I found this short book (well, scarcely more than a long essay) was a little disappointing after having read some of Bennett's fiction set in the "Five Towns", though I did acknowledge that his argument was well-constructed and lucidly expressed. Still, i think i will stick to his fiction for the foreseeable future.

[jburlinson_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Short and, determinedly, sweet. Bennett's advice is quite straightforward: determine something you like to do, plan out a program of how to do that thing that you like to do, and then do that thing you like to do. Bennett likes to read and to meditate on Marcus Aurelius. He is gracious enough to consider that someone else may "have a like for the natural history of street-cries". That's OK, it's all one. The hallmarks of Bennett's style are consistent with his program for spending his and your time: charm, conviviality and adherence to a clear plan.

[birchdev_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day is a short read by Arnold Bennett where he explains his thoughts on time management. A few takeaways from the books are as follows: Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. No one can take it from you. It is unstealable. And no one receives either more or less than you receive. Some people are constantly haunted by a suppressed dissatisfaction with their own arrangement of your daily life; and that the primal cause of that inconvenient dissatisfaction is the dealing that you are leaving undone something which you would like to do, and which, indeed, you are always hoping to do when you have "more time". The most important preliminary task is arranging one’s life so that one may live fully and comfortably within one's daily budget of twenty-four hours. 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 man should not make two-thirds of his existence subservient to one-third, for which admittedly he has no absolutely excitement from. How can he hope to live fully and completely if he did? 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.One of the chief things which man has to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity; they do not tire like and arm or a leg. All they want is change, not rest. Cultivate your mind while on the street and on the train. While idle, concentrate your mind on a subject. It does not matter what you concentrate on, so long as you concentrate. It is the mere disciplining of the thinking machine that counts. It is important to realize 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. It is important to have your conduct and principles agree.