Increasing Efficiency In Business, Walter Dill Scott [best novels for teenagers .TXT] 📗
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of the arms, legs, and face, by breathing
slowly and deeply, and by placing the body in a
condition of general relaxation.
<p 214>
This antecedent condition of relaxation
brings all the forces of the mind and body more
completely under control and makes it possible
to marshal them more effectively. It also
gives one a feeling of control and assurance,
which minimizes the possibility of confusion
and embarrassment in the presence of an important
task. The possibility of developing
the power of relaxation by means of special
training is being taken advantage of in teaching
acts of skill, in all forms of mental
therapeutics, and in numerous other instances
where overtension hinders the acquisition or
accomplishment of a useful act. By assuming
the attitude of assurance and composure, the
actual condition is produced in a manner most
astonishing to those who have never attempted
it. No man can do his best when he is hurried
and fearful, when he is expending energy in a
manner as useless as a tug blowing off steam.
That relief is within his own power seems to
him impossible. He is not aware of his power
of will to change from his state of anxiety to
one of composure.
<p 215>
That the gospel of relaxation is more important
to the chief executive than to the day
laborer is quite apparent. Even in the case of
the day laborer the crack of the lash and the
curse of the driver may have been capable of
securing a display of activity among the laborers,
but such means are not comparable in
efficiency to the more modern methods. Laborers
are now given more hours of rest, are
not kept fearful and anxious, but are given
short hours of labor and long hours of rest.
They are judged by the actual results of their
labor rather than by their apparent activity.
_When accomplishing intellectual work of any
sort, it is found that worry exhausts more than
labor_.
Anxiety as to the results is detrimental to
efficiency. The intellectual worker should
periodically make it a point to sit in his chair
with the muscles of his legs relaxed, to breathe
deeply, and to assume an attitude of composure.
Such an attitude must not, of course,
detract from attention to the work at hand,
but should rather increase it. Upon leaving
<p 216>
his office, the brain worker should cultivate
the habit of forgetting all about his business,
except in so far as he believes that some particular
point needs special attention out of
office hours. The habit of brooding over
business is detrimental to efficiency and is
also suicidal to the individual.
It is, of course, apparent to all that relaxation
may mean permanent indifference, and
such a condition is infinitely worse than too
great a tension. An employer who is never
keyed up to his work, and an employee who
goes about his work in an indifferent manner,
are not regarded in the present discussion.
A complete relaxation of the body often
gives freedom to the intellect. The inventor
is often able, when lying in bed, to devise his
apparatus with a perfection impossible when
he attempts to study it out in the shop. The
forgotten name will not come till we cease
straining for it. Very many of the world’s
famous poems have been conceived while
the poet was lying in an easy and relaxed condition.
This fact is so well recognized by some
<p 217>
authors that they voluntarily go to bed in the
daytime and get perfectly relaxed in order
that their minds may do the most perfect
work. Much constructive thinking is done
in the quiet of the sanctuary, when the monotony
of the liturgy or the voice of the speaker
has soothed the quiet nerves, and secured a
composed condition of mind. The preacher
would be surprised if he knew how many costumes
had been planned, how many business
ventures had been outlined, all because of the
soothing influence of his words.
_This relaxation of the body not only gives
freedom to the intellect, but it is the necessary
preliminary condition for the greatest physical
exertion and for the most perfect execution of
any series of skillful acts_.
Mr. H. L. Doherty not only held the world’s
championship in tennis, but he was the despair
of his opponents, because of the apparent lack
of exertion which he put forth to meet their
volleys. So far as an observer could judge,
Mr. Doherty kept only those muscles tense
that were used in the game. The muscles
<p 218>
especially necessary for tennis were also, so
far as possible, kept lax except at the instant
for making the stroke. Partly because of this
relaxation, his muscles were free from exhaustion
and under such perfect control that at the
critical moment he was able to exert a strength
that was tremendous and a skill that was
amazing.
In a very striking paragraph Professor James
has shown the reason why poise and efficiency
of mind are incompatible with tenseness of
muscles:—
“By the sensations that so incessantly pour
in from the overtense excited body the overtense
and excited habit of mind is kept up; and
the sultry, threatening, exhausting, thunderous
inner atmosphere never quite clears away. If
you never give yourself up wholly to the chair
you sit in, but always keep your leg and body
muscles half contracted for a rise; if you
breathe eighteen or nineteen instead of sixteen
times a minute, and never quite breathe out at
that,—what mental mood can you be in but
one of inner panting and expectancy, and how
<p 219>
can the future and its worries possibly forsake
your mind? On the other hand, how can they
gain admission to your mind if your brow be
unruffled, your respiration calm and complete,
and your muscles all relaxed?”—“Talks to
Teachers,” p. 211.
In ancient Greece, one of the chief functions
of the school was to prepare citizens to profit
by the hours of freedom from toil. Herbert
Spencer, in his great work on Education, gives
a prominent place to training for leisure hours.
Such training is attracting the attention of
the American educator to-day as never before.
A few decades ago the majority of the American
population lived on farms, spent long hours of
the day in toil, and scarcely thought of recreation.
We have now become an urban population,
the hours of labor have been greatly reduced
during the days of the week, and Sunday
is a day in which the laborer is found in
neither the factory nor the church.
The employer of laborers fears the effect of
long hours of freedom from toil. He has
prophesied that such hours would be spent
<p 220>
in dissipations. He feared that as a result
his laborers would enter their shops with unsteady
hands and sleepy brains. That such
results are all too often due to freedom from
toil, no one would deny. That they are not
necessary will also be admitted. One of the
problems of the American people as a whole,
and of employers of labor in particular, is to
train up the rising generations so that they
may make the best use of the increasing hours
of freedom from labor.
To this end the schools are doing much.
Settlement workers are contributing their
part. Welfare work is becoming popular in
certain places. Local clubs are being organized
to develop interest in local improvement,
literature, politics, ethics, religion, music,
athletics. These agencies are so beneficial
in results that they are being generously
encouraged by business men.
_Upon entering business every young man
should select some form of endeavor or activity
apart from business to which he shall devote a
part of his attention. This interest should be so_
<p 221>
_absorbing that when he is thus engaged, business
is banished from mind_.
This interest may be a home and a family;
it may be some form of athletics; it may be
club life; it may be art, literature, philanthropy,
or religion. It must be something
which appeals to the individual and is adapted
to his capabilities. Some men find it advisable
to have more than a single interest for the
hours of recreation. Some form of athletics
or of agriculture is often combined with an
interest in art, literature, religion, or other
intellectual form of recreation. Thus Gladstone
is depicted as a woodchopper and as an
author of Greek works. Carnegie is described
as an enthusiast in golf and in philanthropy.
Rockefeller is believed to be interested in golf
and philanthropy, but his philanthropy takes
the form of education through endowed schools.
Carnegie’s philanthropy is in building libraries.
If the lives of the great business men
are studied it will be found that there is a
great diversity in the type of recreation chosen;
but philanthropy, religion, and athletics are
<p 222>
very prominent—perhaps the most popular
of the outside interests.
These interests cannot be suddenly acquired.
Many a man who has reached the years of
maturity has found to his sorrow that he is
without interests in the world except his specialty
or business. With each succeeding year
he finds new interests more difficult to acquire.
Hence young men should in their youth
choose wisely some interests to which they
may devote themselves with perfect abandon
at more or less regular intervals throughout
life.
The more noble and the more worthy the
interest, the better will be the results when
considered from any point of view. Indeed,
the interests which we call the highest are
properly so designated, because in the history
of mankind they have proved themselves to be
the most beneficial to all.
THE RATE OF IMPROVEMENT IN EFFICIENCY
NO novice develops suddenly into an
expert. Nevertheless the progress
made by beginners is often astounding.
The executive with experience is
not deceived by the showing made by new
men. He has learned to accept rapid initial
progress, but he does not assume that this
initial rate of increase will be sustained.
The rate at which skill is acquired has been
the subject of many careful studies. The results
have been charted and reduced to curves,
variously spoken of as “efficiency curves,”
“practice curves,” “learning curves,” according
to the nature of the task or test. Some of
these dealt with the routine work of office and
factory. In others typical muscular and mental
activities were observed in a simpler form
than could be found in actual practice.
<p 223>
<p 224>
Five of my advanced students joined me in
strenuous practice in adding columns of figures
for a few minutes daily for a month. Our
task was to add 765 one-place figures daily in
the shortest possible time. No emphasis was
placed on accuracy, but each one tried to make
{illust. caption = FIG. 1.}
the highest daily record for speed. The
results of our practice are graphically shown in
Curve A of Fig. 1. As shown in that curve
for the first day our average speed was only
forty-two combinations per minute, but for the
thirtieth day our average was seventy-four
combinations per minute, We did not quite
<p 225>
double our speed by the practice, and we made
but little improvement in accuracy. The most
rapid gain was, as anticipated, during the first
few days. We made but little progress from
the sixteenth to the twenty-third day, and
also from the twenty-fourth to the thirtieth
day.
Of the six persons practicing addition, five
of us also practiced the making of a maximum
grip with a thumb and forefinger. Just before
beginning the adding each day this maximum
grip (or pinch) was exerted once a second for
sixty seconds, first with the right hand and
then with the left. Likewise at
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