As I look back upon it [his life] it seems to me a great catalogue of short-comings. Much that I had planned, I have never attempted-much that I attempted has only partially succeeded. With dying Grotius, I feel much like exclaiming-“Eheu, vitam perdidi laborious, nihil agenda” (I have spent my life laboriously doing nothing). As far as I can, I would like to guard you against my mistakes.
One of my besetting sins has been procrastination. This has not been purely a result of indolence, but often of indecision, and like many other faults, it has connected itself with a virtue, or at least assumed its semblance, i.e., the prudence which does nothing rashly, and decides nothing before time. Hence, often while hesitating, new information has come to me, which turned the scale of decision, and without which I might have decided wrongly. But on the other hand, sometimes while hesitating the golden moment for action has passed, and I have found myself like the dilatory rustic, who is just too late for the train, gazing at the departing opportunity, open mouthed and astonished.-I have decided to fix for myself the rule always to do the day’s work in a day; and when my work is of a sort that it can be measured off, and ascertained to be done, I can observe the rule pretty well. But much of my work is of a sort which knows no limit or completion. . . . The right apportionment of time, when either one of half dozen things that claim one’s attention is sufficient to absorb it all-is often a problem of no small difficulty.
