Successful men and women never waste time. They have not enough of it for present, urgent use. The days are too short for them; dinner comes too soon; they could use more time than they have to good advantage. They believe, with [Benjamin] Franklin, “If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.”

Yet much time is wasted by both old and young. Hundreds who complain that they have no time to devote to reading and study, waste enough of it in worthless musing, building air castles, games, and pleasures to class them with literary people, if such time were improved in that direction.

Mary Lyon, founder of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, observed this tendency among young ladies in this institution to waste much valuable time. Long before that she had observed the tendency in herself, and guarded against it by constant watchfulness.

She was a poor girl and kept house for an unmarried brother, at sixteen years of age, for one dollar a week. This was extra large pay for those times, but the loving brother wanted to assist her to acquire an education for which she thirsted. Every moment was precious to her, both night and day. She improved them in reading and studying. She would have wasted dollars as soon as she would have wasted moments. It was this care-taking against wasting time that she carried with her into the Mount Holyoke Seminary. The students were blessed thereby, for they learned that wasting time was the worst wastefulness known to men and women.

After her death a paper was found among her effects, containing seven ways of wasting time, against which she guarded, as follows:

1. Indefinite musings

2. Anticipating needlessly

3. Needless speculations

4. Indulgence in reluctance to begin a duty

5. In doubtful cases, not deciding at once

6. Musing needlessly on what has been said or done, or what may be

7. Spending time in reveries which should be spent in prayer.