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Habits
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 same time. Gradually, the reading of notes and the execution are reduced to habit, and I can then turn my attention to the reading of the words of the air. As each essential detail is reduced to habit, I acquire the ability to read the score, to make the correct finger and foot movements, to read the words of the song, to sing it correctly, and at the same time to be thinking more or less of other things.
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 our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding or regretting of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. If there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my readers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right.''
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 depleted. The peace and restfulness of an orderly and systematic household are in part dependent upon the fact that it is only in such a household that we are enabled to turn over to habit the accomplishment of untold recurrent acts.
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 with an English book. Attending lectures delivered in German is to me more exhausting than the same lectures would be if delivered in English.
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 constructive thinking is most stimulating and exciting, no man can continue it for more than a few hours or a few minutes unless it depends mainly upon old habits.
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. |
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