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How to Use Your Mind - A Psychology of Study: Being a Manual for the Use of Students - and Teachers in the Administration of Supervised Study by Harry D. Kitson
page 35 of 144 (24%)

Our acts our angels are, or good, or ill,
Our constant shadows that walk with us still.

Since you cannot avoid forming habits, how important it is that you
seek to form those that are useful and desirable. In acquiring them,
there are several general principles deducible from the facts of
nervous action. The first is: Guard the pathways leading to the brain.
Nerve tissue is impressible and everything that touches it leaves an
ineradicable trace. You can control your habits to some extent, then,
by observing caution in permitting things to impress you. Many
unfortunate habits of study arise from neglect of this. The habit of
using a "pony," for example, arises when one permits oneself to depend
upon a group of English words in translating from a foreign language.

Nerve pathways should then be guarded with respect to _what_ enters.
They should also be guarded with respect to the _way_ things enter.
Remember, as the first pathway is cut, subsequent nervous currents will
be directed. Consequently if you make a wrong pathway, you will have
trouble undoing it.

Another maxim which will obviously prevent undesirable pathways is, go
slowly at first. This is an important principle in all learning. If,
when trying to learn the date 1453, you carelessly impress it first as
1435, you are likely to have trouble ever after in remembering which is
right, 1453 or 1435. As you value your intellectual salvation, then, go
slowly in making the first impression and be sure it is right. The next
rule is: Guard the exits of the nervous currents. That is, watch the
movements you make in response to impressions and ideas. This is
necessary because the nervous current pushes on past obstructions,
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