The Correct Use of Time
The art of using time aright is so to live that we may in our short life do as much g6od work as we can, and neglect no opportunity of improving ourselves intellectually and morally. In this way we may expect to be happy ourselves and make others happy.
The rules to be laid down for the proper use of time can best be expressed negatively. They take the form of warnings against the various ways in which we are tempted to waste our time.
One of the most important of these rules is that we should avoid unpunctuality. It was wittily said of a certain English Prime Minister that he lost half an hour every morning and ran after it all the day without being able to overtake it.
The unpunctual business man who has several appointments to keep in the course of the day, is likely, if he is late for the first appointment, to be late for all the subsequent ones.
And his being late for even one appointment may involve great waste of time, as in many cases the punctual man who has come in time will not wait for the late comer, so that both of them lose the time they have taken to come to the meeting place.
A fault resembling unpunctuality is procrastination, which has well been called the thief of time. Procrastination is the habit of putting off till tomorrow what we can do today. One great danger of this lies in the uncertainty of the future. By to-morrow circumstances may have changed, and it may be then out of our power to do what we intended.
Even though the material circumstances have not changed, yet each to-morrow, when it comes, is converted into to-day, and then there is another to-morrow to which we are likely once more to postpone our neglected duty. The evil of procrastination is an obstacle to moral progress.
The way to hell is said to be paved with good intentions, because the good resolutions we make to reform ourselves in the future are so often broken.
If we are really determined to cure ourselves of any bad habit, we ought, in the words of the poet
The rules to be laid down for the proper use of time can best be expressed negatively. They take the form of warnings against the various ways in which we are tempted to waste our time.
One of the most important of these rules is that we should avoid unpunctuality. It was wittily said of a certain English Prime Minister that he lost half an hour every morning and ran after it all the day without being able to overtake it.
The unpunctual business man who has several appointments to keep in the course of the day, is likely, if he is late for the first appointment, to be late for all the subsequent ones.
And his being late for even one appointment may involve great waste of time, as in many cases the punctual man who has come in time will not wait for the late comer, so that both of them lose the time they have taken to come to the meeting place.
A fault resembling unpunctuality is procrastination, which has well been called the thief of time. Procrastination is the habit of putting off till tomorrow what we can do today. One great danger of this lies in the uncertainty of the future. By to-morrow circumstances may have changed, and it may be then out of our power to do what we intended.
Even though the material circumstances have not changed, yet each to-morrow, when it comes, is converted into to-day, and then there is another to-morrow to which we are likely once more to postpone our neglected duty. The evil of procrastination is an obstacle to moral progress.
The way to hell is said to be paved with good intentions, because the good resolutions we make to reform ourselves in the future are so often broken.
If we are really determined to cure ourselves of any bad habit, we ought, in the words of the poet