Increasing Efficiency In Business - Walter Dill Scott (ebook reader browser .txt) 📗

CHAPTER XIII

CAPITALIZING EXPERIENCE—HABIT FORMATION

 

AFTER spending four years in an Eastern

college, a young graduate was put in

charge of a group of day laborers. He

assumed toward them the attitude of the athletic

director and the coach combined. He set

out to develop a winning team, one that could

handle more cubic yards of dirt in a day than

any other group on the job.

 

He had no guidebook and no official records

to direct him. He did not know what the

best “form” was for shoveling dirt, and he

did not know how much a good man could

accomplish in an hour. With stop watch

and notebook in hand, he began to observe

the movements of the man who seemed the

best worker in the group. He counted the

different movements made in handling a

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shovelful of dirt, and the exact time required

for each of the movements. He then made similar

observations upon other men. He found

that the best man was making fewer movements

and faster movements than his companions.

But he also discovered that even

this best workman was making movements

which were not necessary, and that he was

making some movements too slowly and thus

losing the advantage of the momentum which a

higher speed would have produced, and which

would have enabled him to accomplish the task

with less effort.

 

The young collegian then set about to standardize

the necessary movements and the most

economical speed for each movement required

in the work of his group. He instructed his

best man in the improved method of working,

and offered him a handsome bonus if he would

follow the specifications and accomplish the

task in the estimated time. The man, eager

to earn the increase, followed the directions

closely, and in a few weeks was enabled to

accomplish more than twice the work of the

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average workman. The improved habit of

working was then taught the other workmen,

and the result was a winning team.

 

The success of the young collegian did not

get into the colored supplements of the daily

press, but it was heralded by mechanical engineers

as marking an epoch in the industrial

advance of humanity. It made manifest

the necessity of a study of habits, the elimination

of the useless ones, and the acquisition

of those most beneficial.

 

The study of habit has not received from the

practical business man the attention which it

deserves because he has too often looked upon

habit as something detrimental to efficiency.

The possession of any and of all habits has at

times been regarded as a misfortune.

 

An employer of men for responsible positions

recently made this inquiry concerning each

applicant for a position, “Does he have any

habits? If so, what are they?” This employer

confused all habits with such things

as habits of intemperance, habits of slovenliness,

habits of dishonesty, and habits of loafing.

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Little did he suspect that the habits of the men

were in reality their strongest recommendation.

He did not realize that the capitalized experience

of these men was funded in the masses of

useful habits which they had acquired.

 

Habits are but ways of thinking and of acting

which by reason of frequent repetition

have become more or less automatic. We are

all creatures of habit; we all possess both good

and bad habits.

 

In performing an habitual act we do not pay

attention to the individual separate steps included

in the act. So we are liable to think of

our habitual acts as those done *carelessly, and

of other acts as those performed with caution

and consideration. The folly of such a criticism

of habit is made apparent by the study of

any act which may be performed by one person

as a habit and by another person as an act

every step of which demands attention. A

barber stropping his razor is a familiar

illustration of the working of habit. An adult

attempting to strop a razor for the first time

and compelled to give attention to each step

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in the process is a typical illustration of an act

demanding attention in contrast with an

habitual act which needs no such attention.

 

We are also inclined to deprecate habits on

the ground that the man in the grip of habit

is hopelessly in the *rut, that the man who has

reduced his work to habit ceases to be original

and is incapable of further improvement.

On the contrary, the grip of habit is but a

support. The editor could not write his

trenchant editorials, and the advertiser could

not write his compelling copy, unless in the act

of writing each could turn over to habit the

manipulation of the pen, the formation of the

letters, and the spelling of the words. The

attorney cannot make his most logical arguments

and the salesman cannot make the best

presentation of his goods, unless they can depend

upon habit for correct verbal expressions,

unless their thoughts clothe themselves

automatically in appropriate verbal forms.

When we are in the grip of habit, if it be a good

habit, we are not so much in a rut as on the

steel rails where alone the greatest progress is

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made possible. We are not enslaved by good

habits, but rather might it be said that no

man is truly free to advance and to make

rapid progress till he has succeeded in establishing

a mass of useful habits.

 

HOW HABITS ARE FORMED

 

Modern physiological psychology has dealt

with the problem of explaining the possibility

of the formation and maintenance of habits.

The explanation is found in the mutual development

of the mind and the nervous system

and in the dependence of thought and

action upon the nervous system, and particularly

upon the brain. To understand habit

we must look beyond thought and action and

consider some of the fundamental characteristic

features of the nervous system. One

such characteristic is the plasticity of the nervous

substance. If I bend a piece of paper and

crease it, the crease will remain even after the

paper is straightened out again. The paper is

plastic, and plasticity means simply that the

substance offers some resistance to adopting a

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new form, but that when the new form is once

impressed upon the substance it is retained.

Some effort is required to overcome the plasticity

of the paper and to form the crease, but

when it is once formed the plasticity of the

paper preserves the crease.

 

Modern conceptions of psychology have

emphasized the intimate relationship existing

between our thoughts and our brains. Every

time we think, a slight change takes place in

the delicate nerve-cells in some part of the

brain. Every action among these cells leaves

its indelible mark, or crease. Just as it is

easy for the paper to bend where it has been

creased before, it is likewise easy for action to

take place in the brain where it has taken place

before.

 

The brain may also be likened to the cylinder

or disk used in a dictating machine and in

phonographs, and a thought likened to the

needle making the original record. It takes

some energy to force the needle through the

substance of the cylinder, but thereafter it

moves along the opened groove with a mini-

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mum of resistance. In a similar way it is

easy to think the old thought or to perform

the old act, but it is most difficult to be original

in thinking and in acting. When an idea

has been thought or an act performed many

times, the crease or groove becomes so well

established that thinking or acting along that

crease or groove is easier than other thoughts

or actions, and so this easier one may be said

to have become habitual. In a very real sense

the thoughts and actions form the brain by

means of the delicate physical changes which

they produce; and then, when the brain is

formed, its plasticity is so great that it determines

our future thinking and acting.

 

HABIT SHORTENS THE TIME NECESSARY FOR A

THOUGHT OR AN ACT

 

Human efficiency depends in part upon the

rapidity with which we are able to accomplish

our tasks. It is surprising to us all when we

find how rapidly we can accomplish our habitual

acts and how slowly we perform the tasks to

which we are compelled to give specific atten-

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tion. I find that I can repeat the twenty-six

letters of the alphabet in two seconds. I do

not give attention to the order of the letters)

but all I seem to do is to start the process, and

then it says itself. If, however, I attempt to

pronounce the alphabet backward, my first

attempt