Initiative Psychic Energy - Being the Sixth of a Series of Twelve Volumes on the - Applications of Psychology to the Problems of Personal and - Business Efficiency by Warren Hilton
page 34 of 45 (75%)
page 34 of 45 (75%)
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without reducing the efficiency of my labor?
One of the busiest and most efficient men in England is quoted as having explained his own accomplishment of big results with the least expenditure of effort: "By organizing myself to run smoothly, as well as my business; by schooling myself to keep cool, and to do what I have to do without expending more nervous energy on the task than is necessary; by avoiding all needless friction. In consequence, when I finish my day's work, I feel nearly as fresh as when I started." [Sidenote: _Why a Man Breaks Down_] The late Professor James, of Harvard University, often referred to as the founder of modern psychology, spoke thus disparagingly of untrained effort: "Your convulsive worker breaks down and has bad moods so often that you never know where he may be when you most need his help,--he may be having one of his 'bad days.' We say that so many of our fellow-countrymen collapse and have to be sent abroad to rest their nerves, because they work so hard. I suspect that this is an immense mistake, I suspect that neither the nature nor the amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and the severity of our breakdowns, but that their cause lies rather in those absurd feelings of hurry and having no time, in the breathlessness and tension, that anxiety of feature and solicitude for results, that lack of inner harmony and ease, in short, by which with us the work is apt to be accompanied." [Sidenote: _How to Economize Effort_] The fact is that to be a truly busy man you must be never in a hurry. |
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