Change Your Life in an Hour: Don't believe you can? You're already doing it...

by Laura Archer

Are you stuck in a rut but don't have the time, money or energy to get out? It's simpler than you think. By encouraging you to make small, personal decisions, this book will help you stop scrolling through other people's stories so that you can start focusing on your own.

We have choice in every moment of our lives. We can choose to say 'yes' or 'no' to an invitation, a job, a partner. We just have to practise cultivating that choice. Change Your Life in an Hour urges you to take back control of how you choose to spend your time - and subsequently your life.

Laura Archer first realised the power of small choices when she started reclaiming her lunch breaks and using them to achieve personal goals. In this, her second book, she inspires you to target your mental, emotional, and physical health through simple but empowering actions that can fit around any lifestyle.

The book focuses on three centres of
Head – Looking at how important good mental health is, and how we can achieve it through guiding our thoughts and the stimulus we input to our minds daily.
Heart – As a society that prioritises rationality and empiricism, our hearts sometimes get left behind, as we listen to our heads first. This section focuses on activities to make your heart sing.
Hands – We spend our days on computers and smart phones, but as humans we are makers and creators, and using our hands is part of our make-up. This section of the book encourages you to reconnect with the world around you.

This book is not restrictive. It is as much about embracing good food, wine and love, as it is about focusing on yoga and meditation. Are you ready to change YOUR life?

Genres: Self Help, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Personal Development

144 pages, Hardcover

Published January 12, 2021

Reviews

[Elena]

The lesson I learnt is that I should not waste 1h reading this. Sorry but this book should be called “a long list of everything ever you could do in one hour”. It’s basically a really long list which would be useful to an alien arriving on earth and wanting to understand what it is that humans do… and overly detailed description of how you could make a basket (“the Latin name for willow”), knit something, or a potato stamp… all this perhaps suggests that the author should indeed… write a guide about making baskets, and just call the book that?!

[Sarah]

I enjoyed this book, some interesting concepts - loved the part about reading and read what you want not what is expected such as classics. Enjoyable and light read but nothing majorly groundbreaking.

[A.M.]

I think the title does this book a disservice. It sounds like all those late night infomercials.

She has a long list of things you could do for an hour (not IN an hour) that will help to change your life, mostly if you continue to do them in the long term. Anything from take a walk at lunchtime to join a choir to take up basket weaving...

It is very English, so some of her options may not work for people in other places. But it was a different way to think about things.

And I am all in on the brain hand link. We need to do more with our hands rather than just click and type.

3 stars

[Tracee]

Basically stop wasting time scrolling and procrastinating and do something productive. Most of the book turned out to be hobby ideas with more information than is needed here, but not enough to effectively instruct you as a beginner.

[Black Flamed Candle Books 🕯️📚]

Honestly ironic and a bit disappointed the audiobook isn’t an hour long. It would’ve made more sense and it definitely could’ve been slimmed down. I listened to the audiobook, 3hrs 37 mins. I rate this 3.5 stars. It had some good tips and tricks but most of this was a list of creative things and ideas that could be done in an hour or at least started e.g learning how to sew, Lino prints/carving, macrame planters etc. not so much how to “change your life” as the title suggests. Not a bad book by any means, but the title felt a bit misleading. Most of the contents could’ve been an entirely different book and the title of this book different in its own right.

[Hana]

If the book were titled "Things to Do in an Hour", it would make even more sense. Still, I was genuinely impressed by how it listed such a wide range of things that aren’t necessarily related, yet each one is something anyone could do but might never think of. I rarely read fiction, but this was a refreshing and worthwhile read that I don’t regret at all . maybe a 3.5⭐️

[Clare]

I've never read a book more like a magazine article than this. It feels like it's mistitled too, should be "hobby ideas for middle class middle aged women".
It gets two stars because as a middle class, middle aged woman it reminded me of a few hobbies I've been meaning to pick up again / try. But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, you could just read a list of hobby ideas in 5 mins instead of this book.

[Ellie]

That'll teach me for always randomly adding library books with long queues to my list because I assume they're gonna be super profound.

Like... This is fine. It's not what I expected and is just a hobby book? I already have too many hobbies I was hoping for a book on micro habits or something. I appreciate what this author is trying to do, but it's not done well.

[Celeste]

This book started off intriguing but ended up feeling like a bunch of buzz feed listicles strung together with a recipe for how to bake a loaf of bread and knit a scarf thrown it to beef it out.

[Jane (Avid reader)]

Not sure it will change anyone’s life - but provides a superficial summary of a bunch of possible hobbies.

Probably best done as an internet blog rather than a book. Glad I borrowed from the library rather than buying.

Here’s a sample so you don’t have to read it:

A boring list on different ways to meditate

A boring list of different styles of yoga

A list of podcasts to listen to to make you think

A list of Ted talks that inspired the author

Embrace new thinking

Why not have a debate with someone you know and then agree to disagree

Do puzzles

Go to a live performance

An insane level of detail on basket weaving

Learn to play an instrument

Dance

Make and sell a cushion cover - lots of detail, how to price it. Buy special scissors, what thread…..

Knit complete with instructions on how to choose knitting needles

Take up paddle boarding, kayaking or rowing.

[Nicki Kendall]

A good premise, it was more about what you can do in an hour not how just doing this one thing for an hour will change your life forever. It was reminiscent to me of Atomic Habits. All about making little changes but being consistent with these changes to reap the rewards and see the changes in your life. It didnt contain any groundbreaking/new information for me but was a concise easy read with some good points to follow. #lauraarcher #changeyourlifeinanhour #quadrille #getlitsy #amazonkindle #tea_sipping_bookworm #thestorygraph #bookqueen #bookstagram

[Ashleigh Cameron]

Ideas to keep you busy

I liked that this book gave some ideas for how best to use time in a varied way. I did however expect it to delve a bit deeper into the switching off from social and digital and cover some of the research and stats around that.

[Alec Mcallister]

Starts off promisingly enough by examining how we use/waste our time but turns into an irritating and boring list of hobbies, which she couldn’t possibly have expertise in all of.
Best tip I could give any prospective reader is save yourself a couple of hours and don’t read it.

[Ciara H]

A good premise. The author emphasises that you can change your life in just a few minutes per day - if you are consistent.
After that, it's not new information.
This book was grand but not outstanding.
It's short. Easy to listen to.
Contains titbits of good information.

[Claire (Book Blog Bird)]

Wow. This was not a good book. In turns patronising and vapid, the author has literally no idea what life is like for 99% of the population. There was nothing groundbreaking or even original. Utter tosh.

[Sean Harding]

Or this worked for me so I wrote a book about it because you know that is how it works.
Or Get a hobby and do something that may interest you
Or a heavily padded book that is only 144 pages long but could have been a 4 page magazine piece.

[Jeffrey Ning]

Laura Archer gives you practical ideas to maintain balanced mind, body, and soul scale of your well being in a limited time span. It is a matter of intent and allocation of time for each aspect. It can serve as dashboard of your health to seriously consider comprehensive planning.

[Laura Wilson-Warwick]

Trying to read more self help books this year. I liked the first 2/3 of this but the last section wasn’t really relevant for what I was looking for as was teaching you how to sew, knit, weave, make things etc

[Michelle]

I would have dnf'd it if I wasn't listening to it in the background at work

[Elisabeth]

Some good ideas there on how to improve quality of life by incorporating different activities into everyday living. However, I think the title is a bit excessively ambitious for what it is.

[Caroline Croezen]

Short and sweet. Expected more from it but I do enjoy these books. Didn't learn anything new unfortunately.

[Rory]

It wasn't for me.

I listened as an audio book and found the narrator's voice slow and monotonous.

I felt the book was poor. Just a glorified magazine article. Drawn out and dull.

[Kit’s Bookish Corner]

Full of useful tips for your mind and some fab ideas for new hobbies to try too. An enjoyable read!

[Cathy]

Enjoyed the mind chapter but the rest were too detailed for an audiobook refering to a pdf with step by step instructions on how to weave a basket!

[Carriin]

As others have said. It's just a long list of hobbies. Ridiculous

[Norina]

Title should be 'during' an hour.

"Therapy is not for treating mental illnesses, but trauma responses, coping mechanisms, and subconscious programming.'

[Linda Joy]

Skim read.. more of a list of activities you can do and how to google it. Meh

[M]

I found this book a little underwhelming. I had really high hopes but it let me down. It would appeal to some people however for me it didn't really capture what I thought it would.

[Amanda]

Got what I needed from the title and moved into reading other books for betterment.

[Ju Ju]

Just a big long list of things you can do