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 ma.s.ses of useful habits which they had acquired.
Habits are but ways of thinking and of acting which by reason of frequent repet.i.tion 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 ma.s.s 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
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-
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-
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 p.r.o.nounce the alphabet backward, my first attempt takes a full minute. If I attempt to say the alphabet forward but to insert after each letter a single syllable, such as "two," it takes sixteen seconds. Thus, a 2, b 2, C 2, d 2, etc., requires eight times as many seconds as the simple alphabet, a, b, c, d, e, etc. The sequence which has become most perfectly habitual requires but two seconds; the process which employs the old habit in part requires sixteen seconds; but the act which has never been reduced to a habit at all (repeating the alphabet backward) requires at least sixty seconds.
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
reduced to the pure habit form, I shall be writing at the rate of not less than five letters per second.
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
of all thoughts, whether in the home or upon the street, in the shop or in the office.
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
was ever attained by the ancient monk in the printing of his scrolls.
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
is the one whose thoughts clothe themselves in the verbal expressions by habit but with no conscious selection of words. The man of the most accurate judgment in any field is the one who has succeeded in reducing to habit most of the steps of the judgments in that field, the one who has the largest stock of intuitive judgment.
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.
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 walk-
ing and of carrying the head, and the use of language are personal habits which are acquired early in life, but which mean much in the chances of success. The manner of eating, of sleeping, and of caring for all the needs of body and mind are for most persons mainly a matter of habit, yet they, to a large extent, determine the condition of health and the length of days.
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
the habits thus acquired beget a fondness for the acts themselves.
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 antic.i.p.ated after the twentieth year.