The art of using of time aright is so to live that
we may u our short life do as much good work as we can, and neglect an
opportunity of improving ourselves intellectually and morally. Time this way we
may expect to be happy ourselves and make other happy. The rules to be laid
down for the proper use of time can be being 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 un punctuality it was wittily said of a certain English prime
minister that he lost half an hour every morning and ran after it a the day
without being able to overtake it. The un punctual business man who has several
appointments to keep in the course of the day is likely, if he is for the first
appointment, to be late for all the subsequent ones. And his being late for
even one appointment man involve great waste of time, as in many cases the late
comer, so that both them lose the time they have taken to come to the meeting
place.
A fault resembling un punctuality is procrastination;
whit has well been called the thief of time. Procrastination is the habit
putting off till tomorrow what we can do today. One great danger this lies in
the uncertainty of the future. By
tomorrow circumstances may have changed, and it may be then out of our power to
do who we intended. Even though the material circumstances have I changed, yet
each tomorrow, when it comes, is converted into today, and then there is
another tomorrow to which we are likely once more to postpone our neglected
duty. The evil of procrastination is an obstacle to moral progress. The way
hell is said to be paved with good intention, because the good resolution we
make to reform ourselves in the future are so often broken. If we are readily
determined to cure ourselves of any bad habit, we ought, in the worlds of the
poet Longfellow, to act in the living present” and at once being to amend our
course,
Besides these general tendencies resulting in waste
of time that we have been considering, we have to be constantly on our guard against
special temptation to idle amusements. Many waste a large amount of valuable
time in reading sensational novels, which are so exciting that they cannot
easily be laid. Others spend many hours of the week skimming trough the columns
of newspapers and reading petty of personal gossip that it is impossible and useless to remember. Other
exhaust their energies by sitting up, night after night, in hot theaters, from
which they return home so late that in the morning they are unfit daily work.
Others spend too much time in conversation with their friends when they ought
to be working.
All these ways of passing the time are perfectly
harmless if used in moderation as means of refreshing our weary faculties. It
is absolutely necessary that we should have intervals of leisure from work, and
it is quite possible to go to the other extreme and waste time by unseasonable
activity when we ought to be resting, or by attempting work which is useless or
beyond our powers. But the opposite fault is far more common beings on the
whole are more apt to be idle when they should work, than to work, when they
requires rest. Therefore, those who teach us to make the best use of our time
are right in especially insisting upon the dander of spending too much time in
our favorite pastimes.