Как жить на двадцать четыре часа в день

1908 self help book by Arnold Bennett

How to Live on Twenty four Hours a Day is a short self help book "about the daily organization of time" by novelist Arnold Bennett. Written originally as a series of articles in the London Evening News in 1907, it was published in book form in 1908. Aimed initially at "the legions of clerks and typists and other meanly paid workers caught up in the explosion of British office jobs around the turn of the [twentieth] century", it was one of several "pocket philosophies" by Bennett that "offered a strong message of hope from somebody who so well understood their lives". The book was especially successful in the US, where Henry Ford bought 500 copies to give to his friends and employees. Bennett himself said that the book "has brought me more letters of appreciation than all my other books put together". Harvard academic Beth Blum argued that "Bennett's essays on the art of living mount a challenge against modernism's disdain for the crude utilitarianism of public taste" and saw Virginia Woolf's hostility to Bennett as "defined, in part, as an inspired rebuttal of Bennett's practical philosophies". In a 2019 New York Times article, Cal Newport recommended How to Live on Twenty four Hours a Day as an inspiration for anyone embarking on a program of "digital decluttering".

In the book, Bennett addressed the growing number of white collar workers that had accumulated since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. In his view, these workers put in eight hours a day, forty hours a week, at jobs they did not enjoy, and at worst, hated. They worked to make a living, but their daily existence consisted of waking up, getting ready for work, working as little as possible during the workday, going home, unwinding, going to sleep, and repeating the process the next day. In short, he did not believe they were really living. Bennett addressed this problem by urging his readers to seize their extra time and make the most of it to improve themselves. Extra time could be found at the beginning of the day, by waking up early, and on the ride to work, on the way home from work, in the evening hours, and especially during the weekends. During this time, he prescribed improvement measures such as reading great literature, taking an interest in the arts, reflecting on life, and learning self discipline. Bennett wrote that time is the most precious of commodities and that many books have been written on how to live on a certain amount of money each day. He added that the old adage "time is money" understates the matter, as time can often produce money, but money cannot produce more time. Time is extremely limited, and Bennett urged others to make the best of the time remaining in their lives.

Which of us lives on twenty four hours a day? And when I say "lives," I do not mean exists, nor "muddles 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 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.