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 with a small result for a big effort, then do not begin.  Lie down again and resume the uneasy doze which you call your existence.

It is very sad, is it not, very depressing and sombre?  And yet I think it is rather fine, too, this necessity for the tense bracing of the will before anything worth doing can be done.  I rather like it myself.  I feel it to be the chief thing that differentiates me from the cat by the fire.

“Well,” you say, “assume that I am braced for the battle.  Assume that I have carefully weighed and comprehended your ponderous remarks; how do I begin?” Dear sir, you simply begin.  There is no magic method of beginning.  If a man standing on the edge of a swimming-bath and wanting to jump into the cold water should ask you, “How do I begin to jump?” you would merely reply, “Just jump.  Take hold of your nerves, and jump.”

As I have previously said, the chief beauty about the constant supply of time is that you cannot waste it in advance.  The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoilt, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your career.  Which fact is very gratifying and reassuring.  You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.  Therefore no object is served in waiting till next week, or even until to-morrow.  You may fancy that the water will be warmer next week.  It won’t.  It will be colder.

But before you begin, let me murmur a few words of warning in your private ear.

Let me principally warn you against your own ardour.  Ardour in well-doing is a misleading and a treacherous thing.  It cries out loudly for employment; you can’t satisfy it at first; it wants more and more; it is eager to move mountains and divert the course of rivers.  It isn’t content till it perspires.  And then, too often, when it feels the perspiration on its brow, it wearies all of a sudden and dies, without even putting itself to the trouble of saying, “I’ve had enough of this.”

Beware of undertaking too much at the start.  Be content with quite a little.  Allow for accidents.  Allow for human nature, especially your own.