Part Two In A Nutshell 14 страница

found that many wives feel driven and harassed by the unending round of housework

and things they must do. They never got their work finished. They were chased by the

clock. To cure this sense of hurry, and worry, the suggestion was made that they draw

up a schedule each night for the following day. What happened? More work

accomplished; much less fatigue; a feeling of pride and achievement; and time left over

to rest and to " primp". (Every woman ought to take some time out in the course of the

day to primp and look pretty. My own guess is that when a woman knows she looks

pretty, she has little use for " nerves". )

5. Finally-avoid tension and fatigue. Relax! Relax! Nothing will make you look old sooner

than tension and fatigue. Nothing will work such havoc with your freshness and looks!

My assistant sat for an hour in the Boston Thought Control Class, while Professor Paul E.

Johnson, the director, went over many of the principles we have already discussed in

the previous chapter-the rules for relaxing. At the end of ten minutes of these relaxing

exercises, which my assistant did with the others, she was almost asleep sitting upright

in her chair! Why is such stress laid on this physical relaxing? Because the clinic knows-

as other doctors know-that if you're going to get the worry-kinks out of people, they've

got to relax!

Yes, you, as a housewife, have got to relax! You have one great advantage-you can lie

down whenever you want to, and you can lie on the floor! Strangely enough, a good

hard floor is better to relax on than an inner-spring bed. It gives more resistance. It is

good for the spine.

All right, then, here are some exercises you can do in your home. Try them for a week-

and see what you do for your looks and disposition!

a. Lie flat on the floor whenever you feel tired. Stretch as tall as you can. Roll around if

you want to. Do it twice a day.

6. Close your eyes. You might try saying, as Professor Johnson recommended, something

like this: ' 'The sun is shining overhead. The sky is blue and sparkling. Nature is calm and

in control of the world-and I, as nature's child, am in tune with the Universe. " Or-better

still-pray!

c. If you cannot lie down, because the roast is in the oven and you can't spare the time,

then you can achieve almost the same effect sitting down in a chair. A hard, upright

chair is the best for relaxing. Sit upright in the chair like a seated Egyptian statue, and

let your hands rest, palms down, on the tops of your thighs.

d. Now, slowly tense the toes-then let them relax. Tense the muscles in your legs-and

let them relax. Do this slowly upward, with all the muscles of your body, until you get

to the neck. Then let your head roll around heavily, as though it were a football. Keep

saying to your muscles (as in the previous chapter): " Let go... let go... "

e. Quiet your nerves with slow, steady breathing. Breathe from deep down. The yogis of

India were right: rhythmical breathing is one of the best methods ever discovered for

soothing the nerves.

f. Think of the wrinkles and frowns in your face, and smooth them all out. Loosen up the

worry-creases you feel between your brows, and at the sides of your mouth. Do this

twice a day, and maybe you won't have to go to a beauty parlour to get a massage.

Maybe the lines will disappear from the inside out!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 26: Four Good Working Habits That Will Help Prevent Fatigue And Worry

Good Working Habit No. 1: Clear Your Desk of All Papers Except Those Relating to the

Immediate Problem at Hand.

Roland L. Williams, President of Chicago and North-western Railway, says: " A person

with his desk piled high with papers on various matters will find his work much easier

and more accurate if he clears that desk of all but the immediate problem on hand. I

call this good housekeeping, and it is the number-one step towards efficiency. "

If you visit the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C., you will find five words painted

on the ceiling-five words written by the poet Pope:

" Order is Heaven's first law. "

Order ought to be the first law of business, too. But is it? No, the average business man's

desk is cluttered up with papers that he hasn't looked at for weeks. In fact, the

publisher of a New Orleans newspaper once told me that his secretary cleared up one of

his desks and found a typewriter that had been missing for two years!

The mere sight of a desk littered with unanswered mail and reports and memos is

enough to breed confusion, tension, and worries. It is much worse than that. The

constant reminder of " a million things to do and no time to do them" can worry you not

only into tension and fatigue, but it can also worry you into high blood pressure, heart

trouble, and stomach ulcers.

Dr. John H. Stokes, professor, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania,

read a paper before the National Convention of the American Medical Association-a

paper entitled " Functional Neuroses as Complications of Organic Disease". In that paper,

Dr. Stokes listed eleven conditions under the title: " What to Look for in the Patient's

State of Mind". Here is the first item on that list:

" The sense of must or obligation; the unending stretch of things ahead that simply have

to be done. "

But how can such an elementary procedure as clearing your desk and making decisions

help you avoid this high pressure, this sense of must, this sense of an " unending stretch

of things ahead that simply have to be done"? Dr. William L. Sadler, the famous

psychiatrist, tells of a patient who, by using this simple device, avoided a nervous

breakdown. The man was an executive in a big Chicago firm. When he came to Dr.

Sadler's office, he was tense, nervous, worried. He knew he was heading for a tailspin,

but he couldn't quit work. He had to have help.

" While this man was telling me his story, " Dr. Sadler says, " my telephone rang. It was the

hospital calling; and, instead of deferring the matter, I took time right then to come to

a decision. I always settle questions, if possible, right on the spot. I had no sooner hung

up than the phone rang again. Again an urgent matter, which I took time to discuss. The

third interruption came when a colleague of mine came to my office for advice on a

patient who was critically ill. When I had finished with him, I turned to my caller and

began to apologise for keeping him waiting. But he had brightened up. He had a

completely different look on his face. "

" Don't apologise, doctor! " this man said to Sadler. " In the last ten minutes, I think I've

got a hunch as to what is wrong with me. I'm going back to my offices and revise my

working habits.... But before I go, do you mind if I take a look in your desk? "

Dr. Sadler opened up the drawers of his desk. All empty- except for supplies. " Tell me, "

said the patient, " where do you keep your unfinished business? "

" Finished! " said Sadler.

" And where do you keep your unanswered mail? "

" Answered! " Sadler told him. " My rule is never to lay down a letter until I have answered

it. I dictate the reply to my secretary at once. "

Six weeks later, this same executive invited Dr. Sadler to come to his office. He was

changed-and so was his desk. He opened the desk drawers to show there was no

unfinished business inside of the desk. " Six weeks ago, " this executive said, " I had three

different desks in two different offices-and was snowed under by my work. I was never

finished. After talking to you, I came back here and cleared out a wagon-load of reports

and old papers. Now I work at one desk, settle things as they come up, and don't have a

mountain of unfinished business nagging at me and making me tense and worried. But

the most astonishing thing is I've recovered completely. There is nothing wrong any

more with my health! "

Charles Evans Hughes, former Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, said:

" Men do not die from overwork. They die from dissipation and worry. " Yes, from

dissipation of their energies-and worry because they never seem to get their work done.

Good Working Habit No. 2: Do Things in the Order of Their Importance.

Henry L. Dougherty, founder of the nation-wide Cities Service Company, said that

regardless of how much salary he paid, there were two abilities he found it almost

impossible to find.

Those two priceless abilities are: first, the ability to think. Second, the ability to do

things in the order of their importance.

Charles Luckman, the lad who started from scratch and climbed in twelve years to

president of the Pepsodent Company, got a salary of a hundred thousand dollars a year,

and made a million dollars besides-that lad declares that he owes much of his success to

developing the two abilities that Henry L. Dougherty said he found almost impossible to

find. Charles Luckman said: " As far back as I can remember, I have got up at five o'clock

in the morning because I can think better then than any other time-I can think better

then and plan my day, plan to do things in the order of their importance. " Franklin

Bettger, one of America's most successful insurance salesmen, doesn't wait until five

o'clock in the morning to plan his day. He plans it the night before-sets a goal for

himself- a goal to sell a certain amount of insurance that day. If he fails, that amount is

added to the next day-and so on.

I know from long experience that one is not always able to do things in the order of

their importance, but I also know that some kind of plan to do first things first is

infinitely better than extemporising as you go along.

If George Bernard Shaw had not made it a rigid rule to do first things first, he would

probably have failed as a writer and might have remained a bank cashier all his life. His

plan called for writing five pages each day. That plan and his dogged determination to

carry it through saved him. That plan inspired him to go right on writing five pages a day

for nine heartbreaking years, even though he made a total of only thirty dollars in those

nine years-about a penny a day.

Good Working Habit No. 3. When You Face a Problem, Solve It Then and There if You

Have the Facts Necessary to Make a Decision. Don't Keep Putting off Decisions.

One of my former students, the late H. P. Howell, told me that when he was a member

of the board of directors of U. S. Steel, the meetings of the board were often long-

drawn-out affairs-many problems were discussed, few decisions were made. The result:

each member of the board had to carry home bundles of reports to study.

Finally, Mr. Howell persuaded the board of directors to take up one problem at a time

and come to a decision. No procrastination-no putting off. The decision might be to ask

for additional facts; it might be to do something or do nothing. But a decision was

reached on each problem before passing on to the next. Mr. Howell told me that the

results were striking and salutary: the docket was cleared. The calendar was clean. No

longer was it necessary for each member to carry home a bundle of reports. No longer

was there a worried sense of unresolved problems.

A good rule, not only for the board of directors of U. S. Steel, but for you and me.

Good Working Habit No. 4: Learn to Organise, Deputise, and Supervise.

Many a business man is driving himself to a premature grave because he has never

learned to delegate responsibility to others, insists on doing everything himself. Result:

details and confusion overwhelm him. He is driven by a sense of hurry, worry, anxiety,

and tension. It is hard to learn to delegate responsibilities. I know. It was hard for me,

awfully hard. I also know from experience the disasters that can be caused by

delegating authority to the wrong people. But difficult as it is to delegate authority, the

executive must do it if he is to avoid worry, tension, and fatigue.

The man who builds up a big business, and doesn't learn to organise, deputise, and

supervise, usually pops off with heart trouble in his fifties or early sixties-heart trouble

caused by tension and worries. Want a specific instance? Look at the death notices in

your local paper.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 27: How To Banish The Boredom That Produces Fatigue, Worry, And Resentment

One of the chief causes of fatigue is boredom. To illustrate, let's take the case of Alice,

a stenographer who lives on your street. Alice came home one night utterly exhausted.

She acted fatigued. She was fatigued. She had a headache. She had a backache. She was

so exhausted she wanted to go to bed without waiting for dinner. Her mother pleaded

... . She sat down at the table. The telephone rang. The boy friend! An invitation to a

dance! Her eyes sparkled. Her spirits soared. She rushed upstairs, put on her Alice-blue

gown, and danced until three o'clock in the morning; and when she finally did get home,

she was not the slightest bit exhausted. She was, in fact, so exhilarated she couldn't fall

asleep.

Was Alice really and honestly tired eight hours earlier, when she looked and acted

exhausted? Sure she was. She was exhausted because she was bored with her work,

perhaps bored with life. There are millions of Alices. You may be one of them.

It is a well-known fact that your emotional attitude usually has far more to do with

producing fatigue than has physical exertion. A few years ago, Joseph E. Barmack,

Ph. D., published in the Archives of Psychology a report of some of his experiments

showing how boredom produces fatigue. Dr. Barmack put a group of students through a

series of tests in which, he knew, they could have little interest. The result? The

students felt tired and sleepy, complained of headaches and eyestrain, felt irritable. In

some cases, even their stomachs were upset. Was it all " imagination"? No. Metabolism

tests were taken of these students. These tests showed that the blood pressure of the

body and the consumption of oxygen actually decrease when a person is bored, and that

the whole metabolism picks up immediately as soon as he begins to feel interest and

pleasure in his work!

We rarely get tired when we are doing something interesting and exciting. For example,

I recently took a vacation in the Canadian Rockies up around Lake Louise. I spent several

days trout fishing along Corral Creek, fighting my way through brush higher than my

head, stumbling over logs, struggling through fallen timber-yet after eight hours of this,

I was not exhausted. Why? Because I was excited, exhilarated. I had a sense of high

achievement: six cut-throat trout. But suppose I had been bored by fishing, then how do

you think I would have felt? I would have been worn out by such strenuous work at an

altitude of seven thousand feet.

Even in such exhausting activities as mountain climbing, boredom may tire you far more

than the strenuous work involved. For example, Mr. S. H. Kingman, president of the

Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank of Minneapolis, told me of an incident that is a

perfect illustration of that statement. In July, 1943, the Canadian government asked the

Canadian Alpine Club to furnish guides to train the members of the Prince of Wales

Rangers in mountain climbing. Mr. Kingman was one of the guides chosen to train these

soldiers. He told me how he and the other guides-men ranging from forty-two to fifty-

nine years of age-took these young army men on long hikes across glaciers and snow

fields and up a sheer cliff of forty feet, where they had to climb with ropes and tiny

foot-holds and precarious hand-holds. They climbed Michael's Peak, the Vice-President

Peak, and other unnamed peaks in the Little Yoho Valley in the Canadian Rockies. After

fifteen hours of mountain climbing, these young men, who were in the pink of condition

(they had just finished a six-week course in tough Commando training), were utterly

exhausted.

Was their fatigue caused by using muscles that had not been hardened by Commando

training? Any man who had ever been through Commando training would hoot at such a

ridiculous question! No, they were utterly exhausted because they were bored by

mountain climbing. They were so tarred, that many of them fell asleep without waiting

to eat. But the guides-men who were two and three times as old as the soldiers-were

they tired? Yes, but not exhausted. The guides ate dinner and stayed up for hours,

talking about the day's experiences. They were not exhausted because they were

interested

When Dr. Edward Thorndike of Columbia was conducting experiments in fatigue, he kept

young men awake for almost a week by keeping them constantly interested. After much

investigation, Dr. Thorndike is reported to have said: " Boredom is the only real cause of

diminution of work. "

If you are a mental worker, it is seldom the amount of work you do that makes you

tired. You may be tired by the amount of work you do not do. For example, remember

the day last week when you were constantly interrupted. No letters answered.

Appointments broken. Trouble here and there. Everything went wrong that day. You

accomplished nothing whatever, yet you went home exhausted-and with a splitting

head.

The next day everything clicked at the office. You accomplished forty times more than

you did the previous day. Yet you went home fresh as a snowy-white gardenia. You have

had that experience. So have I.

The lesson to be learned? Just this: our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by

worry, frustration, and resentment.

While writing this chapter, I went to see a revival of Jerome Kern's delightful musical

comedy, Show Boat. Captain Andy, captain of the Cotton Blossom, says, in one of his

philosophical interludes: " The lucky folks are the ones that get to do the things they

enjoy doing. " Such folks are lucky because they have more energy, more happiness, less

worry, and less fatigue. Where your interests are, there is your energy also. Walking ten

blocks with a nagging wife can be more fatiguing than walking ten miles with an adoring

sweetheart.

And so what? What can you do about it? Well, here is what one stenographer did about

it-a stenographer working for an oil company in Tulsa, Oklahoma. For several days each

month, she had one of the dullest jobs imaginable: filling out printed forms for oil

leases, inserting figures and statistics. This task

was so boring that she resolved, in self-defence, to make it interesting. How? She had a

daily contest with herself She counted the number of forms she filled out each morning,

and then tried to excel that record in the afternoon. She counted each day's total and

tried to better it the next day. Result? She was soon able to fill out more of these dull

printed forms than any other stenographer in her division. And what did all this get her?

Praise? No. ... Thanks? No. ... Promotion? No. ... Increased pay? No. ... But it did help to

prevent the fatigue that is spawned by boredom. It did give her a mental stimulant.

Because she had done her best to make a dull job interesting, she had more energy,

more zest, and got far more happiness out of her leisure hours. I happen to know this

story is true, because I married that girl.

Here is the story of another stenographer who found it paid to act as if her work were

interesting. She used to fight her work. But no more. Her name is Miss Vallie G. Golden,

and she lives at 473 South Kenilworth Avenue, Elmhurst, Illinois. Here is her story, as

she wrote it to me:

" There are four stenographers in my office and each of us is assigned to take letters

from several men. Once in a while we get jammed up in these assignments; and one

day, when an assistant department head insisted that I do a long letter over, I started to

rebel. I tried to point out to him that the letter could be corrected without being

retyped-and he retorted that if I didn't do it over, he would find someone else who

would! I was absolutely fuming! But as I started to retype this letter, it suddenly

occurred to me that there were a lot of other people who would jump at the chance to

do the work I was doing. Also, that I was being paid a salary to do just that work. I

began to feel better. I suddenly made up my mind to do my work as if I actually enjoyed

it-even though I despised it. Then I made this important discovery: if I do my work as if I

really enjoy it, then I do enjoy it to some extent I also found I can work faster when I

enjoy my work. So there is seldom any need now for me to work overtime. This new

attitude of mine gained me the reputation of being a good worker. And when one of the

department superintendents needed a private secretary, he asked for me for the job-

because, he said, I was willing to do extra work without being sulky! This matter of the

power of a changed mental attitude, " wrote Miss Golden, " has been a tremendously

important discovery to me. It has worked wonders! "

Without perhaps being conscious of it. Miss Vallie Golden was using the famous " as if"

philosophy. William James counseled us to act " as if" we were brave, and we would be

brave; and to act " as if" we were happy, and we would be happy, and so on.

Act " as if" you were interested in your job, and that bit of acting will tend to make your

interest real. It will also tend to decrease your fatigue, your tensions, and your worries.

A few years ago, Harlan A. Howard made a decision that completely altered his life. He

resolved to make a dull job interesting-and he certainly had a dull one: washing plates,

scrubbing counters, and dishing out ice-cream in the high-school lunch-room while the

other boys were playing ball or kidding the girls. Harlan Howard despised his job-but

since he had to stick to it, he resolved to study ice-cream-how it was made, what

ingredients were used, why some ice-creams were better than others. He studied the

chemistry of ice-cream, and became a whiz in the high-school chemistry course. He was

so interested now in food chemistry that he entered the Massachusetts State College

and majored in the field of " food technology". When the New York Cocoa Exchange

offered a hundred-dollar prize for the best paper on uses of cocoa and chocolate-a prize

open to all college students-who do you suppose won it? ... That's right. Harlan Howard.

When he found it difficult to get a job, he opened a private laboratory in the basement

of his home at 750 North Pleasant Street, Amherst, Massachusetts. Shortly after that, a

new law was passed. The bacteria in milk had to be counted. Harlan A. Howard was

soon counting bacteria for the fourteen milk companies in Amherst-and he had to hire

two assistants.

Where will he be twenty-five years from now? Well, the men who are now running the

business of food chemistry will be retired then, or dead; and their places will be taken

by young lads who are now radiating initiative and enthusiasm. Twenty-five years from

now, Harlan A. Howard will probably be one of the leaders in his profession, while some

of his class-mates to whom he used to sell ice-cream over the counter will be sour,

unemployed, cursing the government, and complaining that they never had a chance.

Harlan A. Howard might never have had a chance, either, if he hadn't resolved to make

a dull job interesting.

Years ago, there was another young man who was bored with his dull job of standing at

a lathe, turning out bolts in a factory. His first name was Sam. Sam wanted to quit, but

he was afraid he couldn't find another job. Since he had to do this dull work, Sam

decided he would make it interesting. So he ran a race with the mechanic operating a

machine beside him. One of them was to trim off the rough surfaces on his machine,

and the other was to trim the bolts down to the proper diameter. They would switch

machines occasionally and see who could turn out the most bolts. The foreman,

impressed with Sam's speed and accuracy, soon gave him a better job. That was the

start of a whole series of promotions. Thirty years later, Sam -Samuel Vauclain-was

president of the Baldwin Locomotive Works. But he might have remained a mechanic all

his life if he had not resolved to make a dull job interesting.

H. V. Kaltenborn-the famous radio news analyst-once told me how he made a dull job

interesting. When he was twenty-two years old, he worked his way across the Atlantic

on a cattle boat, feeding and watering the steers. After making a bicycle tour of

England, he arrived in Paris, hungry and broke. Pawning his camera for five dollars, he