CHAPTER XIII
CAPITALIZING EXPERIENCE—HABIT FORMATION Increasing Human Efficiency in Business: A Contribution to the Psychology of Business | ||
13. 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
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
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.
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
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
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
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 minimum
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 attention.
Some time ago I could pick out the letters on a typewriter at the rate of about one per second. Writing is now becoming reduced to a habit, and I can write perhaps three letters a second. When the act has been
I can send a telegraph message at a rate but little faster than one contact per second. Those who have reduced the transmission of messages to a habit are capable of making twelve contacts per second.
In multiplying one three-place number by another I have the fixed habit of writing the multiplier under the multiplicand, the partial products under these, and the final product beneath all. If I reverse all these positions, the multiplying should be no more difficult, but as a matter of fact this simple reversal increases the time of operation about eighty-five per cent. All mathematical operations are rapid in proportion to the degree to which they are habitual.
The speed of thought is slow unless it follows the old creases and the old grooves. No adequate speed is possible so long as attention must be given to the succeeding stages of the thought or act. This is true of all acts and
Great speed of thought and action must not be confused with hurried thought and action. Speed which is habitual is never hurried. There are many acts of skill which can be done much more easily if performed rapidly than if performed slowly. When working hurriedly, there is a speeding up of all movements whether necessary or unnecessary; but the speed secured from correct habits is primarily dependent upon the elimination of useless movements and the concentration of energy at the essential point.
HABIT INCREASES ACCURACY OF ACTING AND THINKING
Where machinery can be employed we find greatly increased accuracy of work. The product of the loom and the lathe are more perfect, more uniform, and more accurate in all details than similar work produced by hand. The product of the printing press thus attains a greater degree of accuracy in details than
In general, our work becomes accurate, as well as swift, in the degree to which we are able to mechanize it into habits. The beginner in piano playing or typewriting pays attention to the striking of each key. When he is in this stage of development he is liable at any time to strike the wrong key and certainly cannot be depended upon for regularity of touch. As soon as he has reduced the striking of the keys to a habit, he ceases to strike the wrong keys and secures uniformity of touch.
The expert marksman has reduced to a habit the necessary steps of shooting and gives no special attention to the position of the fingers, the tension of the hands, the angle of the head, the closing of the eye, and the pulling of the trigger. He has reduced all these to habit before he is able to secure his expert skill.
The reliable bookkeeper has reduced to habit the combining of all the ordinary sums of the ledger. The man of accuracy of speech
HABIT RELIEVES THE ATTENTION FROM DETAILS
Attention cannot be directed to more than one thing at a time. It is doubtless true that the "one thing" may be very complex, e.g. four letters or even four words. So long as the performance of an act demands attention, this one act is practically all that can be done at that time. As soon as this thing is reduced to habit, it may go on automatically, and the attention may be turned to other things.
When I begin to learn to play the piano, the finger movements require all my attention so that I cannot read the notes on the scale and make the proper execution at the
My use of the pen has become so reduced to habit that I need pay no attention to the writing, but am enabled to give my entire attention to the thought which I am attempting to formulate. So every useful habit becomes a power or a tool which may be used for multiplying the efficiency of the individual. Habit formation is the greatest labor saving device in the human economy. No one has expressed this truth so forcefully as the late Professor William James.
"The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize
HABIT REDUCES EXHAUSTION
The various acts connected with my morning toilet have been reduced to sheerest habit. I do not think of the different acts as I perform them—they seem to perform themselves. The sequence of the various acts and the manner of performing them are not particularly good, but I do not seem inclined to change them. I put on my left shoe before my right, my right sleeve before my left. I have the absurd habit of washing my teeth after I have washed my face. That my habits may execute themselves automatically, all the articles of my toilet must be in their proper places. I am thwarted in carrying out my habits unless my laundry has been properly placed, unless towels, brushes, etc., are all where they should be. If everything is in its place, I get down to breakfast refreshed and recuperated. If the toilet articles are so located that I am compelled to do consciously what I might have done subconsciously, I get down to breakfast irritated and nervously
The experienced accountant can add figures continuously for eight hours a day, and at the end of the day may feel no great exhaustion. The man who has not reduced to habit the necessary steps in addition cannot add continuously for two hours without a degree of exhaustion so great that it paralyzes effort. The same is true with typewriting, telegraphing, and with all forms of manipulations which may be reduced to habit.
The habit of reading in a foreign language is rarely so well established as the habit of interpreting the printed symbols of the mother tongue. Even when I seem to be reading German as easily as English, a few hours spent in reading German is to me much more exhausting than the same amount of time spent
Work that requires much constructive thinking cannot be continued for many hours a day. This is due to the fact that such thinking does not admit of complete reduction to specific habits. The executive who accomplishes much is the man who has formed many useful habits and who is able to fall back on them for a large part of his work. His decisions are reached in a habitual manner. Investigations take a regular, automatic course. All the details of the office are reduced to mechanical system. No useless energy is spent in giving attention to details that can be better done by habit, and the mind is thus freed from exhaustion and left fresh for attacking the problems arising for solution.
The performance of every new act and the thinking of every new idea is of necessity exhausting, and they become easy to the extent to which they utilize old habits. Although
Some of the most constructive thinkers of the world have been men who could work at their original work for but a few minutes at a time. One brilliant contemporary writer accomplishes most when he works not more than fifteen minutes at a time. Charles Darwin is famous for the originality of his thinking, and hence we are not surprised when we find that he was able to work but three hours out of the twenty-four.
PERSONAL HABITS
Personal habits are the most apparent and those by which we most often judge an individual. Manner of dress becomes so much a matter of habit that the wearing apparel is sometimes spoken of as the habit, and, as Shakespeare says, it oft betrays the man. Cleanliness and neatness of appearance, the tone and accent of voice, the manner of walking
We become fond of doing things in the manner to which we have become habituated. This tendency manifests itself to an abnormal degree in the drinking and the smoking habit. In a lesser degree we see the same thing in the attachment of the babe for his pacifier and the child for his chewing gum. Habit creates a craving for the good as well as for the bad. The ways to which we have become habituated seem pleasing to us whether they be good or bad. There is truth in the proverb, "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it." It might be added that the child will not want to depart from the way to which he has been trained, for
It is very unusual for any one to acquire a language after the age of twenty so as to speak it without a foreign accent. All other personal habits are like the use of language in that they are acquired during the early years and are not easily changed. So far as personal habits are concerned, but little change need be anticipated after the twentieth year.
SOCIAL HABITS
Our treatment of others is largely a matter of habit. We are affable or gruff according to habit. Honesty and dishonesty in dealing with others is, in the main, a matter of habit. The honest man is the one who takes honesty for granted and acts honestly from habit. So soon as he begins to observe that he is an honest man, to call attention to the fact, and to be much impressed by the honor of his choices—at that moment suspicion of him should be entertained, for honesty has with him ceased to be a habit.
We classify individuals largely by means of their personal and social habits. By these the gentleman is recognized as surely as the boor. By means of them we select our friends and engage new employees. Efficiency in every life calling depends upon our success in dealing with people. Such success is largely dependent upon the social habits that we acquire.
OCCUPATION HABITS
Until the recent rise of interest in psychology, relatively little attention had been given to the study of those habits which are developed in business. When proper care is not given to the formation of these habits developed in connection with one's daily occupation, wrong habits are certain to appear. The mason makes two motions with his trowel where he should make but one. The accountant substitutes "short cuts" in adding where all the operations should be taken in regular order and made as automatic as the few short cuts previously developed. The executive has the
Therefore, one of the most noteworthy events in the business and industrial world of the last twenty years is the study of the occupation habits of the workman to which reference was made in the first paragraphs of this chapter. The research has been especially successful in dealing with the occupation habits of mechanics.
The fundamental discovery was made that the workman's occupation habits are not such as enable him to accomplish his task in an economical and efficient manner. To discover what occupation habits should be developed, experts in each of several typical establishments were assigned the task of
An investigation into the results secured from the adoption of this scientific attempt to study and to regulate the occupation
Mr. H. R. Hathaway, an expert engineer, testifies that "under this system a workman can turn out from two to four times as much work" as he was able to accomplish when working with his old habits,
Mr. Lewis Sanders, of the General Engineering Company, New York, reports most satisfactory results from the introduction of this systematic attempt to regulate the occupation habits of employees. A typical example which he reports is the following: It regularly took a man one minute and forty seconds to set a piece in a jig. "After a study of the exact motions required to pick the piece up and set it accurately, we showed the same man how to do it in twenty seconds." This workman soon reduced the correct movement to habit, attained the specified speed, and without in any way working harder than formerly was assisted to increase his efficiency four hundred per cent.
A well-known engineering company required
Typewriting is carried on by habits. The habit of writing most naturally formed is that known as the sight system. Recently, attempts have been successfully made to enable the operators to form the habit of writing by touch rather than by sight. The
No one has been more successful in studying occupation habits than Mr. Frank B. Gilbreth, an expert in the building trades. He discovered that in constructing a brick wall a good mason can lay one hundred and twenty bricks in an hour and that in laying each brick he makes eighteen distinct motions. The motions were not made in an economical sequence; some of them were useless, and merely exhausted the energy of the workman. Mr. Gilbreth attempted to apply to the industry of bricklaying the principles of billiard playing. Every motion of the mason should be a "play for position." He should make each motion so as to be ready for the next. For example, the motion of placing the mortar for the end joint should end with the trowel in position ready to cut off the hanging mortar. When the motions are made in the correct sequence,
Attempts to develop beneficial occupation habits in executives have not yet been exhaustively and scientifically carried out. Such experiments are, however, sure to be
The introduction of physics and chemistry have led to marvelous results in methods of manufacture and transportation. Those who have given most attention to the advances of psychology during the past two decades are confident that by the proper application of psychology the efficiency of men is to be increased beyond the idle dream of the optimist of the past. Since by a study of habits the efficiency of men in fundamental occupations has been increased from forty to four hundred per cent, it is hard to prophesy what results are to be secured from more extensive studies.
CHAPTER XIII
CAPITALIZING EXPERIENCE—HABIT FORMATION Increasing Human Efficiency in Business: A Contribution to the Psychology of Business | ||