Haste Makes Waste

Pt. Shriram Sharma Acharya


The famous Victorian English author Bulwer Lytton started writing novels just as a hobby. However, his writing was so brilliant that he became widely recognized as one of the leading English authors. Someone asked Lytton about the secret of his success. Lytton said, “I never do anything in haste to get a lot of things done in one go. I rather prefer to do it meticulously, in the best possible way. If you push yourself too hard beyond your natural ability, you will become too tired the following day to be able to do anything properly, even a simple task! I actually never learned any writing skills up until I left college and had family responsibilities. Then I started learning and I really believe that I didn’t strive any less than other people learning new skills. I traveled across many countries, entered politics, and gained first-hand experience of many trades and industries. In spite of that I managed to author more than sixty books. Believe it or not, I never spent more than three hours a day studying and writing! Nonetheless, whatever I studied or wrote in those three hours was always done with total concentration, keen interest and great determination.”