So I'm reading this book. This is a paragraph I read, and my thoughts on the separate ideas. It's quoted in order.

"Do things outside break in to distract you.?" That's me caring about what others think of me. Or maybe anything that distracts my focus.

"Give yourself a time of quiet to learn some new good thing and cease to wander out of your course. " I think he's saying stay focused, Is the 'time of quiet' = prayer/meditation? I'm not religious.

"But, when you have done that, be on your guard against a second kind of wandering. For those who are sick to death in life, with no mark on which they direct every impulse or in general every imagination, are triflers, not in words only but also in their deeds."

Okay so, first part was saying stay focused and if you get distracted, go meditate or maybe it's saying go take a quick break but come back soon? But the second part warns of a second type of distraction or wandering without direction. Aimlessness. I think he's saying you need to have a greater good in life that you're taking on as a responsibility, something higher than yourself, something that from which you can define your purpose and from which stems every action and thought, no matter how far removed. Else you have nothing to give you purpose, because you didn't take anything on as a purpose.

What do you guys think?