Busyness

“ And here let us say, it is desirable, when you invite friends to dinner or tea, that you choose such days as are the least filled with work which cannot be well set aside,—such as washing, ironing, etc.,—so that you may take time for entertaining your guests, without the burden of feeling that you are compelled to leave for to-morrow the work that should [Pg 315] have been done to-day, and, by so doing, to lay up for yourself too heavy burdens and unsettle the regular course of labor for the rest of the week. ”

“ Work hard during your business hours, conserve your energies, but outside of business hours, let play, study and recreation occupy your time.
If you go home from business at night and forget the things you have been doing in the day and use your time for the things in life outside of business, the next day, when you go to your office, you can make things fly.
It is proverbial that the busy man is the one to go to if you wish things done promptly. ”

“ When you feel restless and unable to work at seven in the evening, say from then till seven the next morning your time is your own—balls, the Empire; there are a thousand things—all the pleasure, or at any rate the passing excitement that you can take in these ways, I crush into the excitement that there is in work—in overwork. ”

“ For when does rest, leisure, recreation give us most pleasure? Everybody knows, it is when we have worked. Recall to mind any unusually heavy work, any hurried and necessary task, or even our daily or weekly duty scrupulously fulfilled: what joy is it not when the task is done to give ourselves a holiday!
Idleness brings with it satiety, weariness, disgust, disorder, [Pg 258] the ruin of the family, the destruction of health, and other evils still more baleful. Work, on the contrary, makes repose enjoyable. Without the fatigue of the day’s work, no pleasure in sleep, and even no sleep at all. ”

“ No man hath hired thee, poor outcast! the day spent, the soul lost! Come in, at the last hour, come in. These have wrought in a noble service the long day through. The sweat of manly toil is on their brow, the joy of a work well done is in their hearts. Come in; the sun still lacks some hours of setting. Bend thy soul to the task, put thy heart into the labour of the hour, and the same meed shall be thine. ”

“ The labourer's coming, released from toil—the schoolboy's coming holiday, or the hard-wrought business man's approaching season of relaxation—the expected return of a long absent and much loved friend; is not the thought of these, or similar joyous events, one which often intermingles with, without interrupting, our common work? When a father goes forth to his 'labour till the evening,' perhaps often, very often, in the thick of his toils the thought of home may start up to cheer him. ”

“ So up, and to the Office till noon, and then home to a little dinner, and thither again till night, mighty busy, to my great content, doing a great deal of business, and so home to supper, and to bed; I finding this day that I may be able to do a great deal of business by dictating, if I do not read myself, or write, without spoiling my eyes, I being very well in my eyes after a great day's work. ”

“ So of the little that is left of life I may reckon two thirds as dead, for Time that a man may call his own is his Life, and hard work and thinking about it taints even the leisure hours, stains Sunday with workday contemplations—this is Sunday, and the headache I have is part late hours at work the 2 preceding nights and part later hours over a consoling pipe afterw'ds. ”

“ For work ever so hard as we penmen may, and rob ever so many hours from sleep as you may choose to compute—as we are forced to do sometimes—that you may have your pabulum of printed matter, more or less amusing and instructive, at breakfast time, or at afternoon club reading hour, we must yet eat, and drink, and sleep, and go into the world soliciting bread or favours, we must quarrel with our wives, if married, and look out the things for the wash, if single—all of which are operations requiring a certain expenditure of time. ”

“ It was a brief and simple chronicle—of hard work, all day over, and from the Monday to the Saturday—too hard work to do anything of nights, save to drop into the sound, dreamless sleep of youth and labour.
"But how did you teach yourself to read and add up, then?"
"Generally at odd minutes going along the road. It's astonishing what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really sets about it. ”

“ But spare time ought to be wasted, not improved.
An hour or so at the ball-game, a contest at tennis, a long and aimless walk, a party at cards, a chess match, or a time spent in jolly talk with friends are not waste; they mean restored strength, upbuilt mental acumen, the doubling of efficiency when work is to do.
Learn to let go. Learn to relax utterly when you sit down. Learn to let every faculty lie down when you lie down, and rest whether you sleep or not. ”

“ Who, among the hard workers of our eastern cities, needs two months' vacation, and can only get away from the desk or office for two weeks?
Who feels the confined work tell on his lungs, or his eyes, or shudders at that tremulousness of the shoulders and arms which precedes the breaking-down from over-work? ”

“ But in any case, whether he does so or not, every man in this country whose life is in-door ought to so divide his time that, come what may, he will make sure of his hour out-of-doors in the late afternoon, when the day's work is nearly or quite done. If he must get up earlier, or get to his work earlier, or work faster while he does work, no matter. ”

“ My working hours are determined by circumstances—morning, afternoon, evening, or late at night. When there is a "must" involved, I work when I must; when I am free I work when I choose or when I feel that I can. ”

“ Let those who think work a pleasure try a week’s mental or manual labour, and then, feeling what a negative bliss there is in mere rest, get to know what it is to yearn, like a schoolboy, for a day’s leisure, ease, and amusement. ”

“ Feast was ready for a long time, and everybody was long time ago called to attend it; but one has bought land, another – married, third – tests his bulls, fourth - builds a railway, factory, busy with missionary in India or Japan, reads sermons, pushes a military law or fails it, takes an exam, writes an academic essay, a poem, a novel. All are busy, have no time to wake up, come to their senses, look at themselves and the world and ask themselves: what do I do? ”

“ But LABOUR, SLEEP, THOUGHT, LABOUR AGAIN, seems to me to be the right order with those who, earning their bread by the sweat of the brow, would yet remember that man shall not live by bread alone. Were it possible that our mechanics could attend the institutions called by their name in the morning instead of the evening, perhaps we should not find them so ready to degenerate into places of mere amusement. ”

“ Those that stir up themselves to their business may expect to have conveniences: " Open thy eyes, awake and shake off sleep, see how far in the day it is, how thy work wants thee, and how busy others are about thee! ”

“ We lived a busy life, with not an hour in the day idle, and few hours in the evening. We lived so full a life, indeed, that it was only by preserving an absolute routine for my own bread-winning labours, from nine a.m. till one, that I was able to resist the siren call of farm and garden, and get my daily stint accomplished. ”

“ I would indeed I were a little child,
⁠Resting my tired limbs on the sunny sands
In far Miletus, where the airs blow mild,
⁠And countless looms throb under busy hands.
The busy hand must calm the busy thought,
⁠And labor cool the passions of the hour ”

“ On that day, there is to be no extra sweeping, dusting, cleaning, cooking, no visiting, no receiving, no reading or writing, but all with one heart and soul are to wait upon her, intent to forward the great work which she graciously affords a day’s leisure to direct. ”

“ If you do things by the job, you are perpetually driven: the hours are scourges. If you work by the hour, you gently sail on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you on to the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort, or not. Working by the hour tends to make one moral. ”

“ How can you, With strenuous work to do— Real slogging work—say, how can you keep pace With leisured folks? Why, you could grow in grace If you had time . . . the daily Interview Was never meant for those who wash and bake. But yet a small Voice whispered: "For My sake Keep tryst with Me! There are so many minutes in a day, So spare Me ten. ”

“ A poor mechanic, working all the week in dust and noise, needs a day of rest and joy, a day to visit stream and wood—a day to live with wife and child; a day in which to laugh at care, and gather hope and strength for toils to come. ”

“ It may be argued that we would be better off if we lost more than a year every day and did all our work at more leisurely pace. This may be, but the time to rest is not when the telephone bell is ringing. ”

“ This proved that these hard-working men, who rested one day in seven, could do and did better and faster work than those who knew no Sabbath, but pushed on from day to day without rest. Man as a working animal needs the day of rest, and with one off in seven will, as has been here and in other places proved, do better work in the remaining six than the one who takes no day of rest. ”

“ They divide the day into regular periods, and give each hour its duty; they systematize their work, and endeavor to bring every thing into a regular routine. But, in a short time, they find themselves baffled, discouraged, and disheartened, and finally relapse into their former desultory ways, in a sort of resigned despair. ”

“ If they could speak for themselves, would they not say—"Give us some rest one day in the week, and we will do all the more for you the other six, and last the longer for it. You yourself work the better, and live the longer, for one day's rest. ”

“ If they have been accustomed to work at particular periods of the day, and the order of things is suddenly reversed, the working hours changed into hours of rest, and vice versa, they may not do as well for a short time, but they will soon accustom themselves to the change, and eat and rest as well as before. ”

“ Henceforth you shall never do more than eight hours’ work in these gardens in one day, I mean of course all by yourself. For sixteen hours every day, you have avoided every one, and carried on work, work, all alone, as if you never meant to speak again. ”

“ Its light comes and goes. When we are very busy, we do not need it so much, but when we sit down to ask just what it is that we are busy about, hope comes out and says, “Here I am; this is the reason you are busy.” ”

“ Let your rest on the one rest-day consist, not in lolling idly and carelessly, but in turning your faculties in some other direction; because the truest rest is to be found, not in luxurious ease, but in using the fresh vigour of your life in other compartments of the brain than those which have been worn by the demands of the six days. ”

“ Labor accomplishes many things in this busy, tired world, and receives her full share of applause for every nail she drives. But leisure writes the letters; leisure aided by observation, and sometimes—as in the case of Mme. de Sévigné—by that rare faculty of receiving and imparting impressions without judicial reasoning, by that winning, uncontentious amenity which accepts life as it is, and men as they chance to be. ”

“ He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night. It is nice to plan to do one's work in office hours, to take up the work in the morning, to drop it in the evening—and not have a care until the next morning. ”

“ Do you think we like the office, the shop, the factory? We ought to be writing poetry, painting pictures, the whole world admiring us. You seem to imagine your man goes off every morning to a sort of City picnic, has eight hours’ fun—which he calls work—and then comes home to annoy you with chatter about dinner. ”

“ Cutting and tying by piece work, an active hand could readily complete his task, the allotment for a day’s work, an hour before noon, and some of those who had walked six or seven miles in the morning would knock off as soon as the task was finished and loaf around the quarters until sundown, while others, pushing their luck, held on until the evening, putting two days’ work into one. ”

“ Except when business compels me to break through my rule, I rise at the same hour every morning, breakfast, lunch, and dine at the same time, and as far as possible retire to rest punctually at the usual moment. ”

“ Supposing that, in consequence of the progress of industry, the number of hours of rest could be increased—that, for example, the hours of the day’s work could be reduced—these hours of rest should then be devoted to the family, to the cultivation of the mind, and not to the fatal pleasures of intoxication. ”

“ The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin for relaxation to his day. ”

“ The Life that is left to you when you have worked twelve hours a day for some capitalist, and slept eight more, and spent another two coming and going from your work—your spare time, I mean? How do you employ your Sundays? Do you go and study Nature? ”

“ Not that the fact is not duly insisted upon that too little work is as fatal as too much to that lightness and alacrity of spirit which are needed for the conversion of spare time into hours of leisure worthy to be so called. ”

“ Methinks I hear some of you say, Must a Man afford himself no Leisure? I will tell thee, my friend, what Poor Richard says, Employ thy Time well, if thou meanest to gain Leisure; and, since thou are not sure of a Minute, throw not away an Hour. ”