这书说世间最大的奇迹和公平是：每人每天有24小时。然后对空闲时间的利用进行指导。我把书一段段摘下来。
So let us begin to examine the budget of the day's time. You say your day is already full to overflowing. How? You actually spend in earning your livelihood--How much? Seven hours, on average? And in actual sleep, seven? I will add two hours , and be generous . And I will defy you to account to me on the spur of the moment for the other eight hours.
说空闲时间人人有，而且不少。每人每天的总时间是一样的，但是，每人每天的空闲时间是不一样的。我一直以为：挣钱，挣更多的钱，其目的是有空闲，有更多的空闲。
Only those who have lived at the full stretch seven days a week for a long time can appreciate the full beauty of a regular recurring idleness. Moreover, I am aging. And it is a question of age. In cases of abounding youth and exceptional energy and desire for effort I should say unhesitatingly: Keep going, day in, day out.
坚持，一天又一天。（注意，这说的是空闲时间的利用，不是上班）
People say:“One can't help one's thoughts.” The control of the thinking machine is perfectly possible.And since nothing happens to us outside our own brains; since nothing hurts us or gives us pleasure except within the brain, the supreme importance of being able to control what goes on in that mysterious brain is patent. When you leave your house, concentrate your mind on a subject(no matter what, to begin with). You will not have gone ten yards before your mind has skipped away under your very eyes and is larking round the corner with another object. Bring it back by the scruff of the neck. Ere you have reached the station you will have brought it back about forty times. Do not despair. Continue. Keep it up. You will succeed. Get your mind in hand. And see how the process cures half the evils of life ——especially worry, that miserable, avoidable, shameful disease——worry.
掌控自己的想法，摒弃多余、消极的念想，集中注意力。
Man, know thyself.I am entirely convinced that what is more than anything else lacking in the life of the average well-intensioned man of today is the reflective mood. But men have attained it(happiness). And they have attained it by realising that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles. All I urge is that a life in which conduct does not fairly well accord with principles is a silly life; and that conduct can only be made to accord with principles by means of daily examination, reflection, and resolution. As for reason, it plays a far smaller part in our lives than we fancy. We are supposed to be reasonable but we are much more instinctive than reasonable. And the less we reflect, the less reasonable we shall be.
能掌控自己想法集中注意力，就有了 有效 的空闲。这段时间做些什么？首先是从反思认识自己。快乐来于保持理性和知行合一。我认为世上没有知行不一的人，认知和信念决定了人的行为。如果说某人知行不一，大概是我们对这人的 知 和 行 的理解出了差错。
Many people pursue a regular and uninterrupted course of idleness in the evenings because they think that there is no alternative to idleness but the study of literature; and they do not happen to have a taste for literature. Now, if you have read, say, Mr. Krehbiel's “How to listen to music”, you would next go to a promenade concert with an astonishing intensification of interest in it. You would “live” at a promenade concert, whereas previously you had merely existed there in a state of beatific coma, like a baby gazing at a bright object. At the end of a year of forty-eight weeks of three brief evening each, combined with a study of programmes and attendances at concerts chosen out of your increasing knowledge, you would really know something about music. What applies to music applies to the other arts.
找点兴趣，学相关的知识，更好地欣赏和生活。
The most important of all perceptions is the continual perception of cause and effect-in other words, the perception of the continuous development of the universe-in still other words, the perception of the course of evolution. When one has thoroughly go imbued into one's head the leading truth that nothing happens without a cause, one grows not only large-minded, but large-hearted.Nothing is humdrum. You need not be devoted to the arts, not to literature, in order to live fully. The whole field of daily habit and scene is waiting to satisfy the curiosity which means life,and the satisfaction of which means an understanding heart.
认识世界：有因有果，有果有因。广阔心胸。
Novels are excluded from “serious reading.” The best novels involve the least strain. Imaginative poetry produces a far greater mental strain than novels. If poetry is what is called “a sealed book” to you, begin by reading Hazlitt's famous essay on the nature of “poetry in general.” If you are finally assured that there is something in you which is antagonistic to poetry, you must be content with history or philosophy. I have two general suggestions of a certain importance. The first is to define the direction and scope of your efforts. The second suggestion is to think as well as to read.
有效的空闲里不要看小说，呵。要看诗、历史和哲学。想好自己的方向和范围，一边阅读一边思考。
诗、历史、哲学，这简单，看唐诗宋词就好了。文、史、哲不分家，就是古汉语。
The first(danger) is the terrible danger of becoming that most odious and least supportable of persons——a prig. It will be found, ultimayely, that in taking care of one's self one has quite all one can do. Another danger is the danger of being tied to a programme like a slave to a chariot. And still another danger is the danger of developing a policy of rush, of being gradually more and more obsessed by what one has to do next. The last, and the chiefest danger which I would indicate, is the risk of a failure at the commenment of the enterprise.
这段说开始利用空闲时间，提升自己之后要注意避免的各种危险：一是总觉得自己很牛。二是成了学习计划的奴隶。三是庄子那句“吾生也有涯，而知也无涯。以有涯之生随无涯之知，殆矣。”最后是，失败和放弃。
前三个我都中了。呃。
Finally, in choosing the first occupationof those evening hours, be guided by nothing whatever but your taste and natural inclination.
想学什么就什么，想做什么就什么。
孔子说的：（年）七十，从心所欲。可别忘了后面还有三个字“不逾矩”。
这本书不长，从中学了很多，得到不少启发，也有实用的技巧，还有一些书单。
好评。推荐。