LearntoBeWiseIdle.doc

Learn to Be Wise Idle
By 饶东玲 20100401613 工商管理
Outline:
1. I am impressed in one of the sentences of Lin Tutang’s article The Importance of Living: those who are wise won’t be too busy, and those who are too busy can’t be wise.
2. Use my experience to support the idea as well as some theories in time management.
3. Chinese traditional concepts toward life attitude in Buddhism and Taoism.

Straight matter:
In Lin Yutang’s article The Importance of Living, I agree with the sentence” Those who are wise won’t be too busy, and those who are busy can’t be wise.”
This sentence reminds me of an unforgettable experience last semester. At that time, I was selected as the responsible person of one of the entities of the Student Work-study Center. It was the first time that I must take charge of over 40 people and lead them to arrange a big activity of recruiting which had attracted nearly 60 employing companies and 2,500 students. However, during the 2 months’ arrangement, I was at a time terribly busy and run round in circles as countless things came out to me and seemed to have no end. Finally, I realized that some changes must be taken place otherwise I would be drowned in trivialities. After that, I started to delegate part of power to my fellow assistants, and made certain period of time specifically to deal with problems appeared in arrangement. With these improvements, I found myself gradually released from high pressure and had more time for relaxed. From the experience, I come to realized that the so-called busy life is not absolutely unchangeable. On the contrary, we do can make ourselves easier by just take some transformations in time management. What’s more, experts in time management also point out that we can divide all things around us into 4 kinds: important and pressing, important but not pressing, not important but pressing, not important and not pressing. The only way to avoid busy life is to reduce the kind of important and pressing things as possible as you can by doing the important but not pressing things before. Thus it can be seen that wise men must understand the skills in learning to be wise idle, so that they can always keep themselves relaxed.
Beyond that, Chinese traditional concepts toward life attitude are also included many theories about leisure life-styles. In Buddhists’ eyes, they think everything is destined and empty, and all we should do is to make our hearts peaceful so that we can be clam when we facing no matter comedy or tragedy, success or failure, simple things or difficulties. In this kind of view, the way to be wisely idle is to change the way we see things. There are nothings special in the world, so wise man would treat things without any ripples in their heart let alone feeling busy. On the other hand, Taoism holds a similar kind of view as Buddhism toward leisure life. The famous theory among Chinese in Taoism is probably the Inaction Theory which believes that everything will have their own naturally developing ways, and we’d better do nothing to interrupt them or just add some force to push forward their development. Therefore, in Taoism’s opinion, wise men won’t be busy, because they almost needn’t to do anything. What they need to do is to penetrate the things and tactfully help the things to develop when they are ready. Generally speaking, although these concepts are not perfect, they provide us some kind of views to be wisely idle and to be wise.
All in all, as an old aphorism holds that, all roads leads to Rome. No matter how busy we are, we always can find a way to make use easy. Please always keep in mind that those who are wise won’t be too busy, and those who are busy can’t be wise.
- 2 -