The first, and inevitable, question which everyone asks is, "How long will it take before my vision improves?" As the answer to this question depends on a number of factors - the seriousness of your eye condition, your ability to acquire complete relaxation and mental control, the steadiness with which you do your exercises - no definite period of time can be set.

Every visual instructor has had cases in which an hour was sufficient to correct the visual defect, and cases in which months of patient effort were required to get the same result. As we learn more and more about the workings of the human mind, it will become possible to effect improvement in a much shorter period of time. Fundamentally, it rests with you. In many cases there are flashes of normal vision almost at once. It is our task to prolong those flashes until the normal vision is constant and not merely a momentary improvement.

There is no stimulus as effective as that of securing that first evidence that the vision is really there. Once you see that for yourself you are apt to become steadfast in performing the exercises and drills.

Now, what are you to do about glasses? Take them off and leave them off - as much as possible. If you can discard them entirely, from the first day, your eyesight will improve more rapidly than if you remove them to do your exercises and then keep them on while you do your work.

Whenever you are wearing glasses, you are restoring the refractive error which your lenses are designed to correct. If, however, your work forces you to spend a great many hours at close work and you have been accustomed to glasses for years, you may find it difficult to give them up entirely. There is no point in going to extremes about this. Try, at least, to give them up as long as you can comfortably, every day. The interval will increase in length. And you will discover that you are able to give them up entirely much sooner than you expect. In some cases, it may take a few days, in others, a few weeks, in severe cases even longer. In the final analysis, again, it depends on you.

The worst mistake you can make is to decide, "I'll wait until I take my vacation - or until my work lets up - or until I have more leisure - or for some other period in the hypothetical future, before I take off my glasses and really get down to work."

We live always in today, never tomorrow. The only time that is of any value is the present moment - is now. The earlier any eye defect is corrected, the simpler the job. Tomorrow - or next month - or next year, it will be that much harder. No one's eyesight has ever improved tomorrow.

People are frequently timid about discarding their glasses. This is as true for the one who has purchased his spectacles by mail order or for the wife who wears her husband's glasses, thinking that what is good for him must be good for her, as it is for the person who has been carefully measured by an oculist. And yet the same person usually observes with surprise, if he breaks or loses his glasses and is forced to go without them for a week or so that his sight begins to improve.

"I don't know," begins the timid soul, "whether I could get used to going without glasses."

Certainly, it is less of an ordeal than getting used to wearing them. Anyone who has struggled through weeks of accustoming himself to bifocals, or to the glare of bright light on the lenses, or their blurring from dust, will find it easy to adjust himself to the freedom of doing without them.