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
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
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.
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
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
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.
