The Secret Of Wealth
132 total pages.
GOLD dust is precious--but not so precious as Time. Who would dip his hand in a bag of gold dust and scatter it on the ground every day? Yet you throw away a richer treasure in wasted Time. The case is even worse than that--it might be possible to sweep up the scattered grains of gold dust and use them again, but who can bring back and use moments idled away?
Last night is gone. This morning has slipped by. If you spent those hours profitably, you have caught something from the tide as it flowed past, just as one catches a fine trout from a running stream. We are so accustomed to wasting about 50 per cent of our Time that we never think about it. We go to places we do not care for, or do things we do not care to do, just "to pass away the time"--to pass away Time, when every hour is precious and can bring wondrous returns in rest, recreation, ideas or study. Business men waste nearly 10 per cent of their Time during business hours, and few of them save 10 per cent of their income, so the daily waste far exceeds their saving. Picking up pins and saving bits of string is not saving; it is often a foolish waste of Time, for the individual can usually spend those moments in a more profitable way. Don't worry about the pins and string--save a half hour today; materialize that half hour into something you can keep. Transform it into an idea, or a plan, or a better arrangement of your business routine. Take out of the river of Time some treasure that will represent every hour of the day. The story is told of Thomas Edison that he has many of his meals served to him in his laboratory, so that he need not spend Time going to the dining room to eat. When he is engrossed in some critical phase of an experiment, he sleeps on a cot beside his work, so that his mind may not be detracted from the problems in hand, and so that every precious moment may be devoted to the perfecting of his idea. He cannot afford to spend Time, for there is nothing more valuable to him and to the world than one moment of the thought and genius of this man.
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The Secret Of Wealth