vicious, or at least irrelevant and distracting, impulses and desires.
And so efficiency is lost.

[Sidenote: _Scientific Management of Self_]

The "human dynamo" is a man who long ago learned the lesson of
scientific management of his own mental forces. He does one thing at a
time, and does it the best he knows how. He directs the whole power of
his mentality to the one problem and solves it with accuracy and
dispatch. There is no more of a "load" on his "gray matter" than there
is on that of the fretting, fuming, finger-biting fritterer, but every
pound of steam is spent in useful work.

Look at the victim of St. Vitus' dance. There you have an illustration
of wasted energy. And it is mental energy, for every muscular movement
represents the release of thought power. The mental lives of most men
are equally aimless. They are lives of ceaseless activity producing
nothing.

[Sidenote: _Psychological Causes of Waste_]

Sometimes it happens that a man is not working to advantage because of
some defect in his physical make-up. He may have defective vision or
some peculiarity of hearing that renders him unable to respond as
quickly as he should to the demands made upon him. If these defects
are ascertained, it is usually a simple matter to correct the defects
by mechanical means or readjust the relative duties of different
persons so that the defects will be minimized.

[Sidenote: _Tests for Sensory Defects_]