On Time

Drawing on a wealth of inspiring snack-sized sources, Time Travel for Beginners shows how we have become drenched by the present. Then it unveils easy, practical ways to use time better. Exploring the psychological, organisational and biological dimensions, Catherine Blyth delves into the secret lives of habits, decisions and motivation; explains why time goes at different rates in different hours and activities, and reveals how cunning time-thieves take our good intentions for a walk. Find out what makes good timing; why some hours trudge while others sprint by; how bright colours, fast food and rapid breathing affect our tempo; how autonomy takes the stress out of pressure, and what hours suit which activities best. Then take a course in time-travel that lets you seize every day and make it feel like a long weekend. Each of us can expect 1000 months on this planet, if we are lucky. Let the next 24 hours usher in the life that you keep meaning to live, if only you had the time. ‘Time Travel for Beginners’ will help you cease clock-watching, stop stockpiling self-reproach and quit chasing white rabbits. Don’t mark time: make it work for you.

Reviews of On Time

Praise for Catherine Blyth: 'It is a treasure trove of literary and historical delights, with each page containing a little gem in the form of a quotation or a factoid Independent on' Sunday 'Witty, charming and appropriately garrulous … it shamed me into wanting to mend my own, lumpen, non-conversational ways and pull my speech-related socks up…this smart little book should be in every house like Gideon bibles in hotel rooms' Mail on Sunday 'A bit of fun by a young genius. 'The Art of Conversation' … is a witty meditation upon all aspects of talk … if you give to a friend it will itself provoke hours of amusing chat as you read out her jokes and her wisdom' A.N. Wilson 'Blending science with psychology and philosophy with literature, she argues the case for banter and badinage. It's free, fun and gets your brain cells firing like the prettiest of firework displays' Marie Claire 'I tried my hardest to dislike 'The Art of Conversation', but it's hard to dislike anything that quotes Chanelle from Big Brother in the same breath as Andrew Marvell and Henry James' Guardian 'Everybody will read it, but pretend they haven't' Observer 'As Woodrow Wilson once opined of the US President Warren Harding, I am simply in possession of 'a bungalow mind'. I hope that reading The Art of Conversation has furnished me with a staircase or two' Observer