Chapter 21 Section 4 Develop good work habits

Only when a person develops good working habits can he act in an orderly manner and accomplish great things.Below we recommend 4 good working habits for you, which can allow you to work efficiently and get rid of fatigue. Good work habit No. 1: Remove all paper from your desk, leaving only what pertains to the business at hand.This way you'll find your work easier to manage and more organized. A publisher of a New Orleans newspaper once told me that his secretary cleared his desk and found a typewriter that had been missing for two years. Having a desk full of letters, reports, memos, and the like is enough to create a feeling of confusion, tension, and anxiety.Worse, it can make you feel like you have a million things to do, but no time to do them, no time to finish them.This emotion can cause you to suffer from high blood pressure, heart disease and stomach ulcers.

Rosie Williams, chairman of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad Company, said: "A man whose desk is full of papers, if he can clear his desk and leave some at hand, will find his work It’s easier and more practical. I call this cleaning chores, and it’s the first step toward being more productive.” If you go to the Library of Congress in Washington, you will see 11 words painted on the ceiling, which are written by the famous poet Pope: "Order, the first law of heaven." Professor John Stocker of the Pennsylvania State University School of Medicine presented a paper at the National Congress of the American Medical Association entitled "Psychological Complications Caused by Physiological Diseases".Here is the first of 11 situations he lists in this article under the heading "Studies of Mental Conditions of Patients":

"There's always a sense of having to do or having to do, and feeling that there's more to do, and that has to be done." The well-known psychotherapist, Dr. William Sander, once cured a patient with this simple method. The patient was a senior executive of a large company in Chicago. When he first went to Shandel's clinic, he was very nervous, restless, and in danger of mental breakdown.Before seeing the doctor, there were three large desks in his office, and he put all his time into work piles, but things seemed to never finish.After he talked with Shandel, the first thing he did when he returned to the office was to clear out a large cart of reports and old documents, leaving only a desk, and he finished the work as soon as he arrived.As a result, he was no longer threatened by a mountain of business affairs, his work gradually improved, and his health also recovered.

Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes said: "Man does not die of overwork, but of waste and worry." The second good work habit: Arrange the order of work by distinguishing the importance of things. Henry Duherty, who founded marketing firms across the United States, said that no matter how much he was paid, it was impossible to find a person with both abilities. These two abilities are: first, the ability to think; second, the ability to do things in the order of their importance. Charles Luckman went from being an obscure man to being the chairman of Pasoden in 12 years, with a salary of $100,000 a year and an additional $1 million in income.He says the reason for his success is his ability to act on priorities.Lukeman said: "As far as I can remember, I get up at 5 o'clock in the morning every morning because my mind is clearer than other times. This way I can plan my work more thoughtfully for the day, according to the importance of things. Arrange the order of things to be done.”

Franklin Berger, one of the most successful insurance salesmen in the United States, didn't wait until 5 o'clock in the morning to plan his work for the day. He planned it the night before.He set a goal for himself-the goal of how much insurance to sell in a day.If not completed, the difference is added to the next day, and so on. If Bernard Shaw hadn't insisted on the principle of doing the first thing first, he would have been a bank teller instead of a dramatist all his life.He drew up a plan and had to write at least 5 pages a day, and he worked like this for 9 years. Of course, it is impossible for a person to always arrange plans according to the importance of things, but doing things according to the plan is definitely much better than doing things according to whim.

The third good work habit: When you have a problem, if you have to make a decision, do it on the spot without delay. A former student of mine, the late HP Howard, told me that when he was a director at U.S. Steel, it always took a long time to start a board meeting, with many issues discussed and few results .In the end, every director on the board had to go home with a big bag of papers to read. Later, Mr. Howard persuaded the board of directors to only discuss one issue at each meeting, and then make a conclusion without delay or delay.The resulting resolution may require further research.However, this issue must lead to a resolution before discussing the next issue.Mr. Howard told me that the results of the reform were astonishing and effective, and all the old scores were settled.The calendar is clean, the directors don't have to go home with a large bag of papers, and everyone no longer worries about unresolved issues.

That's a good idea, not just for the U.S. Steel board, but for you and me. The fourth good working habit: learn how to organize, hierarchical responsibility and supervision. Many businessmen are digging their own graves because they don't know how to delegate responsibility to others and insist on doing everything themselves.As a result, many little things make him busy, he always feels rushed, anxious and tense. A man who runs a large business without learning how to organize, layer, and monitor is likely to die of a heart attack in his 50s and early 60s. I used to think that hierarchical responsibility is very difficult, and if the person in charge is not ideal, it will cause disaster, but a person who is in charge must do so if he wants to avoid worry, tension and fatigue.