How to Live on 24 Hours a Day | Page 4

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. I remain
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 do. The whole difficulty of the
hard-working minority was put in a single colloquial sentence by one of my
correspondents. He wrote: "I am just as keen as anyone on doing something to 'exceed
my programme,' but allow me to tell you that when I get home at six thirty p.m. I am not
anything like so fresh as you seem to imagine."
Now I must point out that the case of the minority, who throw themselves with passion
and gusto 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 "h.p." The other eight
working hours of their day may be badly organised, or even frittered away; but it is less
disastrous to waste eight hours a day than sixteen 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
braced 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
programme is bigger than his, I want to exceed my programme too! I am living a bit; 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 forty 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 "h.p." upon
it. There 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 programme 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
monopolised by his ordinary day's work. What, then, is to be done?
The obvious thing to do is to circumvent your ardour for your ordinary day's work by a
ruse. Employ your engines in something beyond the programme 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 of a night--to do so
would upset 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
consequences 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--and of slackness. I
am convinced that most people sleep as long as they do because they are at