Books by Aubrey Marcus
Own the Day, Own Your Life is the Aubrey Marcus book in our library. It is the organising book in the bundle: it takes the day apart and asks what each part is for, which makes it a useful frame for everything the other four books cover.
That makes it the map rather than a method. Sleep, food, movement and attention are treated as parts of a single structure rather than as separate projects, and the book is most useful for deciding which part of your day to work on first.
How to read it. Read it as the map for this bundle. It tells you which of the other books answers the part of the day you actually want to change.
It sits in the Health and Meditation bundle as the only book here that covers the whole day rather than one part of it. The others each take a single third or a single input.
The book
Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimized Practices for Waking, Working, Learning, Eating, Training, Playing, Sleeping, and Sex
Aubrey MarcusThe day treated as a structure you can design rather than a sequence you endure. Its value on this shelf is as an organising frame, connecting sleep, food, movement and attention into one thing rather than four.
What it argues- The day can be designed rather than merely got through.
- Each part of the day has a purpose, and the parts affect each other.
- Mornings and evenings are treated as the highest-leverage ends of the day.
- Sleep, food, movement and attention are one system rather than four projects.
- Small adjustments at the right time beat large ones at the wrong time.
Suited to a reader who wants an overview before committing to one area, and to anyone who has improved one thing and found it undone by another. Less deep than the other four books, which is the point of it.
Where to start
Read it first if you are unsure where to begin in this bundle, because it is the one book here that tells you which of the others to read. Then pick the part of the day that is failing and go to the book that covers it. Do not read it end to end and stop there, because it is a directory rather than a destination.
Where this fits
This is the map of the health shelf rather than a specialist book. Why We Sleep goes deeper on sleep, How Not to Die on food, and The 4-Hour Body on measurement. Read this one to decide which of those you need, and read the others knowing that each of them is more useful than this one on its own subject.
The rest of this shelf
The Health and Meditation shelf holds 5 books in total. These are the others, each condensed into a guide you can finish in about 15 minutes:
- Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker
- How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease by Michael Greger and Gene Stone
- The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman by Timothy Ferriss
- Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World by Mark Williams and Danny Penman
Design the day, with four more
Own the Day, Own Your Life is in the Health and Meditation bundle with Why We Sleep, How Not to Die, The 4-Hour Body and Mindfulness.
Five complete guides, about 15 minutes each.
Explore Health and MeditationA day is a structure you can design.