Seneca the Younger Quotes

We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be, as Poor Richard says, “the greatest prodigality'; since, as he elsewhere tells us, 'Lost time is never found again'; and 'What we call time enough always proves little enough'. Let us then up and be doing, and doing to the purpose; so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity.

There is no shortage of time. In fact, we are positively awash with it. We only make good use of 20 per cent of our time.... The 80/20 principle says that if we doubled our time on the top 20% of activities, we could work a two-day week and achieve 60 per cent more than now.

The wisest are the most annoyed at the loss of time.

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.

We need a sense of the value of time - that is, of the best way to divide one's time into one's various activities.

I divide my time badly.

The biggest waste of time is to do well something that we need not do at all.

Time is like money, the less we have of it to spare the further we make it go.

Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.

If you spend your time, worth $20-25 per hour, doing something that someone else will do for $10 per hour, it's simply a poor use of resources.

You cannot grow more hours in the day. However, you can make better use of those hours.

It's not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.

Nothing easier than to confuse busyness with goodness.

Make good use of your time, it flies fast.

I don't have time to distinguish between the unfortunate and the incompetent.

Ten minutes are not just one-sixth of your hourly pay; ten minutes is a piece of yourself. Divide yourself into ten units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activities. Most things still remain to be done.

It has been left to our generation to discover that you can move heaven and earth to save five minutes and then not have the faintest idea what to do with them when you have saved them.

It is better to burn the candle at both ends, and in the middle, too, than to put it away in the closet and let the mice eat it.

Waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both.

I recommend to you to take care of the minutes; for hours will take care of themselves. I am very sure, that many people lose two or three hours every day, by not taking care of the minutes.

Economy is the thief of time.

But why do only unimportant things?" asked Milo, who suddenly remembered how much time he spent each day doing them. "Think of all the trouble it saves," the man explained, and his face looked as if he'd be grinning an evil grin--if he could grin at all. "If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you'll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won't have the time. For there's always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing, and if it weren't for that dreadful magic staff, you'd never know how much time you were wasting.

Time management is really personal management, life management. and management of yourself.

One of the secrets of getting more done is to make a TO DO List every day, keep it visible, and use it as a guide to action as you go through the day.