How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

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• Q22HABIT

  Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?

  Strengthens, if not worshipped. A daily programme gives mastery over one's time, but one must not be tied to it like a slave to a chariot.

  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.

  Chapters II and XII (Dangers to Avoid) · Downloaded Gutenberg #2274; confirmed chapter titles and the Dangers to Avoid passage. Year 1908 not confirmed in the file.