Stop wasting your time ! Seneca’s lessons

“It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it”, says Seneca in his Treatise on the Brevity of Life.

What Seneca means is that to exist is not to live. Some people spend their time wrongly, others spend it well.

Are you one of those people who spend their time wrongly ?

Seneca calls “preoccupied” those who spend their time wrongly. They are the non-philosophers, those who live without asking too many questions, without taking too much distance from their actions and thoughts.

The author cites, for example, drunkards, lazy people, greedy, idlers… But also those who waste too much time in body care, those who live only on a passion, those who do unnecessary scholarly work, etc.

“As soon as it comes to wasting time, they are most extravagant with the one commodity for which it’s respectable to be greedy”, he says.

Further on :

“They are too busily preoccupied with efforts to live better; they plan out their lives at the expense of life itself. They form their purposes with the distant future in mind. Yet the greatest waste of life lies in postponement: it robs us of each day in turn, and snatches away the present by promising the future.”