How to Take Your Time: from How Proust Can Change Your Life

by Alain de Botton

Curiously practical—this no-nonsense blend of literary biography and self-help unravels how interesting life can be if only you could resist the impulse to rush through the mundane rituals of modern life. Every morning, Marcel Proust sipped his two cups of strong coffee with milk, ate a croissant from one boulangerie, dunking it in his coffee as he slowly read the day’s paper with great care—poring over each headline and section.

Only Alain de Botton could have pulled so many useful insights from the oeuvre of one the world’s greatest literary masters. Fascinating and vital, How to Take Your Time will urge you to find the wisdom in defying “the self-satisfaction felt by ‘busy’ men—however idiotic their business—at ‘not having time’ to do what you are doing.” 

A Vintage Shorts Wellness selection. An ebook short.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

27 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 13, 2017

About the author

Alain de Botton is a writer and television producer who lives in London and aims to make philosophy relevant to everyday life. He can be contacted by email directly via www.alaindebotton.com

He is a writer of essayistic books, which refer both to his own experiences and ideas- and those of artists, philosophers and thinkers. It's a style of writing that has been termed a 'philosophy of everyday life.'

His first book, Essays in Love [titled On Love in the US], minutely analysed the process of falling in and out of love. The style of the book was unusual, because it mixed elements of a novel together with reflections and analyses normally found in a piece of non-fiction. It's a book of which many readers are still fondest.

Bibliography:
* Essays In Love (1993)
* The Romantic Movement (1994)
* Kiss and Tell (1995)
* How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997)
* The Consolations of Philosophy (2000)
* The Art of Travel (2002)
* Status Anxiety (2004)
* The Architecture of Happiness (2006)
* The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009)

Reviews

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think that he makes a really good point about slowing down and seeing what's in front of you. If anything the pandemic as highlighted how we live in such a speedy world and we are not good at slowing down. The fact that Proust used to read a train timetable and get inspired by it is quite telling.

[Afifah Luqman · Rating 2 out of 5]

it took forever to get to the point

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely, short little meditation that actually makes me want to read Proust...

[Amir Ali Hamed · Rating 3 out of 5]

سخنان زیبا از کتاب آلن دوباتن پروتست چگونه می تواند زندگی شما را تغییر دهد:
- انسان ها تنها زمانی که فناپذیری خود را بپذیرند آن موقع هست که تحقق آرزوی های خود را به فردا موکول نخواهند کرد.
-کتاب می تواند بسیار مفید باشد وقتی که ایده هایی که سال ها در ذهن داشتیم ولی درباره حقانیت آنها شک داشتیم در کتابی آنها را کشف می کنیم در این صورت به این دیدگاه مهر تائیدی زده می شود. .
اما در مواردی که افسار ذهن خود را تمام و کمال در اختیار کتاب قرار دهیم به مثابه برده بدون و چون و چرای آن کتاب خواهیم شد که این می توانید دامی باشد که در راه خواننده مطیع گسترده شده است.
- خوشی برای بدن ما لازم است ولی این اندوه است که ما را به بلوغ می رساند
-هر چیزی که سهل الوصول باشد ارزشمند نخواهد بود حتی عشق. اگر سلامتی به خطر افتد می تواند قدر عافیت را دانست.

[Issa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Proust is a metaphor—of the gentle act of slowness, patience, and reverence of detail. His book In Search of Lost Time is infamous for describing a man's inability to fall asleep, tossing and turning, across thirty pages; one sentence rambled on for forty-four lines. But, says Alain de Botton, we should aspire to be more like Proust, this master of unhurried observation, who created elaborate stories from the one-liner briefs in the morning paper; who read train timetables when he couldn't fall asleep; who wrote a long-winded, difficult book described by his own brother thus, "people have to be very ill or have broken a leg in order to have the opportunity to read." Proust’s genius was his ability to stretch a moment into eternity, to show us that life’s fullness lies in its details. This book notes that fulfillment lies not in constant movement but in the act of lingering... It encourages us to pause, observe, and savor, and to awaken to the depth of what already surrounds us.

n’allez pas trop vite

[Gavin D'Souza · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up How to Take Your Time expecting a long, slow meditation on patience and creativity—but it flew by faster than I could yawn. Then again, it’s Alain de Botton.

Though I’ve never really dived into Marcel Proust, it’s fascinating to see how gentleness and simplicity can shape true masterpieces.

In a world constantly in a rush to create art, Botton urges, through Proust, that good things, perhaps necessarily so, take time.

n'allez pas trop vite

[Ariana Ramirez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, concise. It convinced me to read Proust someday and to pay more attention, to go slower

[Paige · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very brief meditation on the merit of enjoying the present moment, which largely repeats de Botton’s earlier book on Proust.

[BaSila Husnain · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting 💭

[jotem]

nie ma sensu oceniać, ale ten fragment zdecydowanie zachęcił mnie do przeczytania książki