John Henry Clive, an astute entrepreneur, founded the company that created Tunstall‘s Market Place (Tower Square) and built the first Market Hall. He believed time was money and too precious to waste.
In 1830, John wrote The Linear System of Short Hand, a practical textbook for students. One of the exercises in the book is called a Letter Against Waste of Time, in which he gives his philosophy of life.
LETTER AGAINST WASTE OF TIME
Converse often with yourself, and neither lavish your time, nor suffer others to rob you of it. Many of our hours are stolen from us, and others pass insensibly away; but of both these losses, the most shameful is that which happens through our own neglect. If we take the trouble to observe, we shall find, that one considerable part of our life is spent in doing evil, and the other in doing nothing, or in doing what we should not do. We do not seem to know the value of time, nor how precious a day is; nor do we consider, that every moment brings us nearer our end. Reflect upon this, I entreat you, and keep a strict account of time. Procrastination is the most dangerous thing in life. Nothing is properly ours but the instant we breathe in, and all the rest is nothing; it is the only good we possess, but then it is fleeting, and the first-comer robs us of it. Men are so weak, that they think they oblige by giving trifles, and yet reckon that time as nothing, for which the most grateful person in the world can never make amends. Let us, therefore, consider time as the most valuable of all things; and every moment spent without some improvement in virtue, or some advancement in goodness, as the greatest sublunary loss.
North Staffordshire Heritage 