How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
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discovery, is so impressed by his discovery that he is capable of being
gravely displeased because the entire world is not also impressed by it.
Unconsciously to become a prig is an easy and a fatal thing.

Hence, when one sets forth on the enterprise of using all one's time, it is
just as well to remember that one's own time, and not other people's time,
is the material with which one has to deal; that the earth rolled on pretty
comfortably before one began to balance a budget of the hours, and that it
will continue to roll on pretty comfortably whether or not one succeeds in
one's new role of chancellor of the exchequer of time. It is as well not to
chatter too much about what one is doing, and not to betray a too-pained
sadness at the spectacle of a whole world deliberately wasting so many
hours out of every day, and therefore never really living. It will be found,
ultimately, that in taking care of one's self one has quite all one can do.

Another danger is the danger of being tied to a programme like a slave to
a chariot. One's programme must not be allowed to run away with one.
It must be respected, but it must not be worshipped as a fetish. A programme
of daily employ is not a religion.

This seems obvious. Yet I know men whose lives are a burden to themselves
and a distressing burden to their relatives and friends simply because they
have failed to appreciate the obvious. "Oh, no," I have heard the martyred
wife exclaim, "Arthur always takes the dog out for exercise at eight o'clock
and he always begins to read at a quarter to nine. So it's quite out of the
question that we should. . ." etc., etc. And the note of absolute finality in
that plaintive voice reveals the unsuspected and ridiculous tragedy of a career.

On the other hand, a programme is a programme. And unless it is treated
with deference it ceases to be anything but a poor joke. To treat one's
programme with exactly the right amount of deference, to live with not
too much and not too little elasticity, is scarcely the simple affair it may
appear to the inexperienced.

And still another danger is the danger of developing a policy of rush, of