How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

About the book

A work to return to, not to consume.

Arnold Bennett wrote this little book for London office workers who felt life slipping away between the job and the armchair. His starting point is a serious joke: every morning you receive twenty-four new hours, exactly the same as anyone else, and no one can take them from you. The problem is not a lack of time but that we treat the working day as if it were the whole day. Bennett proposes setting aside “a day within a day”: about ninety minutes, a few evenings a week, to train concentration, reflect, read seriously or take an interest in the arts. He tells it with irony, with examples of trains, newspapers and tennis, and with sensible warnings: start small, do not become a slave to your own programme and do not turn into an unbearable prig.