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The phrase to improve the shining hour means: to make the best use of one’s time.

This phrase occurs, for example, in the following from Harry Belafonte looks back in anger, by Sally Vincent, published in The Guardian (London and Manchester, England) of Saturday 16^th November 1996 [The Guardian Weekend, page 14, column 1]—Harry Belafonte (Harold George Bellanfanti, Jr. – 1927-2023) was a U.S. singer, actor and civil rights activist:

In the time it takes to transfer one small fish into one large man, I am left in no doubt that Belafonte has improved every shining hour of the past 20 years in a one-man onslaught against injustice and corruption in the world. Goodwill ambassador to Unicef, global ombudsman to the oppressed, wherever they may languish, a philanthropist who puts his money where his mouth is, a celebrity sought out by presidents and statesmen the world over to help inject a little meaning to the phrase “civil rights”.

The phrase to improve the shining hour alludes to the following piece from Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of Children (London: Printed for M. Lawrence, 1715), by the English hymn-writer Isaac Watts (1674-1748) [page 29]:

SONG XX.
Against Idleness and Mischief.

I.

How doth the little busy Bee
Improve each shining Hour,
And gather Honey all the day
From every opening Flower!

II.

How skilfully she builds her Cell!
How neat she spreads the Wax!
And labours hard to store it well
With the sweet Food she makes.

III.

In Works of Labour or of Skill
I would be busy too:
For Satan finds some Mischief still
For idle Hands to do.

IV.

In Books, or Work, or healthful Play
Let my first Years be past,
That I may give for every Day
Some good Account at last.

These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the phrase to improve the shining hour that I have found:

1-: From a letter, entitled Political Reform, that John Drakard (1775?-1854), the Editor of Drakard’s Stamford News, wrote to the British politician Charles Philip Yorke (1764-1834), Member of Parliament for Cambridgeshire from 1790 to 1810—letter published in Drakard’s Stamford News, and General Advertiser, for the Counties of Lincoln, Rutland, Northampton, Huntingdon, Leicester, Nottingham, and the parts adjacent (Stamford, Lincolnshire, England) of Friday 9^th February 1810 [page 2, column 4]:

Hapless the nation which lies at the mercy of a set of Placemen and Courtiers! A despotic Prince may rule with rigor; yet, as the glory and power of his Crown are inseparably connected with the prosperity of his subjects, he will in general study to promote their welfare. But Placemen and Courtiers move in a narrow orbit of their own,—round self-interest as an isolated center. They have no communion of feeling or of advantage with the body of their fellow subjects. They know themselves to be the creatures of a day, and their object, therefore, is to improve the “shining hours” by every possible expedient of nefarious industry. They are but tenants at will, and they accordingly set themselves to exhaust rather than to improve the estate.

2-: From a letter to the Editor, dated Tuesday 1^st January 1811, by ‘Agricola’, published in the Portland Gazette, and Maine Advertiser (Portland, Maine, USA) of Monday 14^th January 1811 [page 1, column 5]—in this letter, the author opposes the farmer’s independence to the obligations inherent to the professions of “Merchants, Doctors, Lawyers, or Divines”:

Now comes the independent farmer—nature’s vivifying spring invites him to the animated fields, faned [sic] by healthful breezes, and enchanted by the feathered songsters; he is lord of the soil, and if like the busy Bee he improves each shining hour, his time is filled with nature’s luxuries; his woodpile cheers the freezing passenger; independence is his; his warm home shields him and his family from the stinging frosts and raging storms.—In short, if happiness is not enjoyed by the gentleman farmer, my compass wont [sic] direct me to that boon on earth.

3-: From Retrospection, an anonymous poem published in the Woodstock Observer (Woodstock, Vermont, USA) of Tuesday 29^th February 1820 [page 4, column 1]:

Alas, I see my mental pow’rs
Were bent on trifles vain and light;
I’ve not improv’d my shining hours,
I’ve fool’d and toil’d till morning low’rs,
And tells th’ approach of night.

4-: From The Naturalist’s Diary for January 1823, published in the Time’s Telescope (London, England) of January 1823 [page 33]:

Bees venture out of their hives every month in the year, and may occasionally be seen on some fine mild days in January, busily improving ‘each shining hour’ in gathering food from the snowdrops, &c.

5-: From the Aberdeen Journal, General Advertiser for the North of Scotland (Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Scotland) of Wednesday 21^st September 1825 [page 3, column 4]:

Honey.—There has not been a more abundant season of honey than the present for this long time past; indeed, the “little busy bee” seems to have well improved the “shining hours” of last summer. The quantity brought into town by the country people last week was extraordinary; the price is, consequently, low. This will be of considerable advantage to the poorer classes, now that butter has become so very dear, by using it as a substitute for the latter.