“It must be respected, but it must not be worshipped as a fetish. A programme of daily employ is not a religion.”
Arnold Bennett, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
Arnold Bennett wrote How to Live on 24 Hours a Day for people who worked all day and wanted more from the hours left over. Near the end he lists the dangers of keeping a plan. One is being “tied to a programme like a slave to a chariot.”
His example is a man called Arthur, who always takes the dog out at eight and always begins to read at a quarter to nine. So the evening can’t hold anything that clashes with his routine, and his wife has to explain why.
Bennett doesn’t let the plan off either: “a programme is a programme. And unless it is treated with deference it ceases to be anything but a poor joke.”
And when the plan keeps running over, he puts it down to “filling one’s programme till it runs over. The only cure is to reconstitute the programme, and to attempt less.”
How to do it in the planner today
- When a day has too many top priorities, the planner says so. Set four tasks as A and it answers: “When everything is the top priority, nothing is. Which one or two truly matter most? The rest can be B’s.”
- Anything not ticked doesn’t vanish. It rolls to today on its own, with a small tag that counts the days it has been carried. Both are on the free plan.
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