Duty-Doing Better than Resolutions
By S. S. Times
Good resolutions are never a short cut to good works. Carefully thought-out plans and earnestly made resolves are valuable only as they bring into plain sight the duties that we ought to be doing. They are worse than useless when we let them take the place of duty-doing, as we so often do. A man will, on his way from his house to his office at the beginning of the day, make such good plans and resolves for that day that by the time he reaches his office he has unconsciously let himself think that the hardest part of the work is already done; and then the real doing of it evaporates in the glow of the plan-making. It is better for most people to spend more of their time on what needs to be done than on planning when and how they will do it. An unplanned duty done is better than a duty that always remains planned for.