The fatal habit of procrastination should be fought persistently. To do things promptly, clearly, and systematically, will insure peace of mind and pleasure in one's work. A business man upon being asked how he managed to attend to so many intricate details of his daily business with apparently no care or worry, said it was due to an invariable rule to clear off his desk by the close of the day in order to begin the following day clear and fresh. This same plan can be advantageously followed in the ordering of one's mind. Instead of permitting ideas and plans to lie about the mind in confusion, like scattered papers on an untidy desk, they should be classified, "pigeon-holed," and put into their proper places. Then a man can take a problem at a time; give it due consideration, and dispose of it in satisfactory and orderly fashion. This actually doing things gradually strengthens the will and at length renders it capable of great achievement.
To begin is often half the battle. "I shall start to-morrow," pleads the indolent man, forgetting that "to-morrow" never comes. "Next winter I shall study French, drawing, shorthand, or public speaking," says another man of good intention. But the season comes and goes, and at the close he finds he has not done one of these things. Procrastination, love of ease or amusement, indefiniteness, imprudence, or miscalculation, have conspired against him, so a whole lifetime may be frittered away in needless and unproductive occupations, due not to lack of ability but to weakness of will. Goethe sings:
"Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute. Whatever you can do, or dream you can begin it."
It is surprising how difficulty yields before a strong and earnest will. A little more resolution and effort, a determination "to do or die," and the seemingly impossible is accomplished. This has been remarkably illustrated in the achievements of men of advanced age. Cato learned Greek, Plutarch studied Latin, and Socrates music, in old age. Gladstone became again Premier of England at eighty-three, and spoke with great eloquence, while Tennyson at the same age wrote his imperishable hymn, "Crossing the Bar." A record of the great things done by men between the ages of seventy and ninety, chiefly through indomitable willpower, would include such names as Michelangelo, Goethe, Titian, Wesley, Kant, Von Moltke, Spencer, Jefferson, Browning, Clay, Calhoun, and Bismarck.
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