Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

CWSA 35

Fragment ID: 9500

Organisation and Discipline in Work [4]

When people set a date by which a work must be completed, the usual result is that there is a huge haste, followed by a period in which people don’t know what to do. Is it really necessary to fix dates? I wonder sometimes if doing so does not create a sort of occult resistance.

It is necessary to fix dates for the organisation of the work, but there must be a certain plasticity so that if necessary the time may be extended. As to particular cases it is a matter of judgment how much time is to be given. It is the system of the schedule, but whether the work can be done “according to schedule”, as they say, has to be seen in practice. The occult resistance is a fact but it applies more to psychological than to physical things.

18 October 1936