feeling that you are every day leaving undone something which you
would like to do, and which, indeed, you are always hoping to do
when you have "more time"; and now that I have drawn your attention
to the glaring, dazzling truth that you never will have "more time,"
since you already have all the time there is--you expect me to let
you into some wonderful secret by which you may at any rate approach
the ideal of a perfect arrangement of the day, and by which,
therefore, that haunting, unpleasant, daily disappointment of things
left undone will be got rid of!

I have found no such wonderful secret. Nor do I expect to find it,
nor do I expect that anyone else will ever find it. It is
undiscovered. When you first began to gather my drift, perhaps
there was a resurrection of hope in your breast. Perhaps you said
to yourself, "This man will show me an easy, unfatiguing way of
doing what I have so long in vain wished to do." Alas, no! The
fact is that there is no easy way, no royal road. The path to Mecca
is extremely hard and stony, and the worst of it is that you never
quite get there after all.

The most important preliminary to the task of arranging one's life
so that one may live fully and comfortably within one's daily budget
of twenty-four hours is the calm realisation of the extreme
difficulty of the task, of the sacrifices and the endless effort
which it demands. I cannot too strongly insist on this.

If you imagine that you will be able to achieve your ideal by
ingeniously planning out a time-table with a pen on a piece of
paper, you had better give up hope at once. If you are not prepared
for discouragements and disillusions; if you will not be content