“Procrastination is the thief of time”, the poet Edward Young wrote in 1742.
The line is one of 10,000 in his poem Night Thoughts (officially, the poem has a longer title).
Here’s where it occurs.
“Be wise to-day; ’tis madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is push’d out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.“
The poet urges us to get those things done which are the most important before we run out of time.
An ancient Chinese poem, The Frost, by Tzu Yeh, has a similar message.
Young man,
Seize every minute
Of your time.
The days fly by;
Ere long you too
Will grow old.
If you believe me not,
See there, in the courtyard,
How the frost
Glitters white and cold and cruel
On the grass that was once green.
Do you not see
That you and I
Are as the branches
Of one tree?
With your rejoicing,
Comes my laughter,
With your sadness
Start my tears.
Love,
Could life be otherwise
With you and me?
Sadly, time is the one commodity we can’t make more of.
We need to use our time and that which belongs to others wisely.
Articles on Time Management abound.
Type the phrase into your search engine, and you’ll see hundreds of posts about the subject.
Perhaps St Francis of Assisi gave the most succinct advice on the subject.
“Start by doing what is necessary, then do what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
Knowing what’s necessary is the starting point.
We know a lot about organising email sales campaigns and what’s necessary for success.
If that’s of interest, send an email to david@theexhibitionagency.com
Very best,