How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Page: 12

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 fails like failure. Most people who are ruined are ruined by
attempting too much. Therefore, in setting out on the immense enterprise
of living fully and comfortably within the narrow limits of twenty-four
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 to a success that is not petty.

So let us begin to examine the budget of the 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.



IV

THE CAUSE 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 ten to six, and who spends fifty 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.