Chapter 37 Always remind yourself that you are interested in your work

Are you bored with your job?Then why don't you play a "pretend" game with yourself, try to make you like it, then you will reap unexpected achievements from it. Boredom is one of the top causes of fatigue.Let's take a lady typist named Alice as an example.One night, Alice came home from get off work feeling exhausted and looking worn out.She was really tired too, with a headache and a sore back, too tired to eat and go to bed.She sat at the dinner table only after her mother asked repeatedly.At this time, the phone rang, and it was her boyfriend who asked her out to dance.Her eyes suddenly brightened.She rushed upstairs quickly, put on the sky blue dress, and danced until three o'clock in the middle of the night.Finally when she finally got home she wasn't tired at all, she was so excited she couldn't sleep!

Was Alice really that tired eight hours ago when she looked and acted exhausted?Indeed, because she felt that work bored her, which caused her fatigue and even boredom with her life.There are countless people like Alice in the world, maybe you are one of them. Here is a well-known fact that a person is usually more likely to feel fatigued due to psychological factors than physical labor.A few years ago, Dr. Joseph Barmack reported in the Acta Psychological Act on some of his experiments showing that boredom produces fatigue.Dr. Barmack had a large group of students perform a series of experiments in which he knew very well that none of them had much interest.The result?All the students felt tired, dozed off, had headaches, eye strain, lost their temper easily, and a few even had an upset stomach.Is all this "imagined"?No, these students have done experiments on metabolism. From the results of the experiments, we know that when a person feels bored, his body's blood pressure and oxygenation will actually decrease.And as soon as the person finds his work interesting, his whole metabolism kicks up.

When we do something interesting and exciting, we rarely feel tired.For example, I was recently on vacation at Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies and fished salmon for several days.At that time, I had to pass through bushes that were taller than me, cross many branches lying on the ground, and climb many old trees that fell on the ground. Don't feel tired.why?Because I was very happy, very interested, and felt accomplished because I caught 6 very large salmon.But if I think fishing is a dull thing, how do you think I feel?I must have been exhausted from running up and down the mountain at 7,000 feet above sea level.

Even something as strenuous as climbing a mountain probably doesn't tire you out as easily as boredom.To illustrate this fact, Mr. S. H. Kingman, President of the Farm and Industrial Savings Bank of Naples, Minnesota, once told me this: In July 1943, at the request of the Canadian government, the Canadian Alpine Mountaineering Club assisted the Welsh Regiment in mountaineering training. Mr. Kingman was a coach selected to train these soldiers.He told me that he and other instructors - ranging in age from 42 to 59 - took the young soldiers on long treks through many glaciers and snow fields, using ropes and some very small climbing equipment. Climb a 40-foot cliff.They climbed Mifeng, Vice President, and many other unknown peaks in the Little Moon River Valley of the Canadian Rockies. After 15 hours of mountaineering, the able-bodied young people were all exhausted.

Are they tired because their muscles were not trained as hard as they were in military training?Anyone who has received serious military training must be disgusted with such absurd views.In fact, the reason they are so exhausted is because they are tired of such mountain training.Many of them were so tired that they fell asleep before supper.But were the coaches—men two or three times the age of the soldiers—were they physically weary?Yes, they are tired too, but they are not exhausted.The coaches sat and talked for hours after dinner about their day.It is precisely because they are interested in this matter that they do not tire to the point of exhaustion.

Dr. Edward Dyke of Columbia University conducted experiments on fatigue by maintaining the pleasure of sobriety in young men for as long as a week by employing the same means by which they are often kept interested.After many investigations, Dr. Dyke stated that "being bored is the only real cause of low energy at work." If you are a mental worker, the reason why you feel tired is seldom because you are working too much, but because you are not working enough.For example, do you remember last Sunday, when you were constantly interrupted, not a single letter was answered, nothing was done about the appointment, there were problems waiting to be resolved here and there, and everything that day was unresolved. No, you haven't done a single thing and come home exhausted and with a headache.

Everything in the office went pretty smoothly the next day.You've done 40 times as much work as you did the first day, and you come home looking energized.You must have had this experience, right?I also had. What can we learn from this?That is, our fatigue is usually not caused by work, but by worry, tension and unhappiness. While writing this chapter, I found time to watch a musical comedy starring Jeremy Caine.Captain Andy, the protagonist in the play, said in a philosophical sentence: "The luckiest people in the world are those who can do what they like to do." The reason why such people are lucky is because of their physical strength. More energy, a happier mood, and less worry and fatigue than others.Likewise, where your interests lie, is where your abilities lie.And if you walk a few blocks with your nagging wife all the way, you will definitely feel much more tired than walking 10 miles with your beloved lover.

So what to do?In this matter, what can you do?Here's what a lady typist did for an oil company in Tosha, Oklahoma.A few days a month, she has to do what many people think is the most boring job: fill out a printed report about oil sales, and fill in various statistics on it.This job is really not interesting. In order to improve her work mood, she came up with a solution and turned it into a very interesting job.How did she do it? She competes with herself every day.She counted the number of reports filled in every morning, and then tried to break her own record in the afternoon; then calculated the total number of reports made each day, and then tried to break the record of the previous day the next day.What was the result?She was much faster than other typists in the same department, and filled out many boring forms in one go.What good would it do her?Got compliments?Didn't... get appreciated?No... have you been promoted?No... salary increase?No... But doing so helps prevent her fatigue from boredom and keeps her in high spirits, because she has done her best to make a boring job interesting, and she It can save more physical and mental energy, so that she can get more happiness when she is resting.

The reason I know this is a true story is because I married this girl. The following is the story of another lady typist.She finds it fun to pretend she likes her job, which leads to more unexpected rewards.She used to dislike her job very much, but now it has changed.Her name was Miss Willie Gordon, and here is the story she told me in her letter: "In my office, there are 4 typists in total. Each of them is responsible for typing letters for several people. Every once in a while we will be too busy because of the workload. One day, a department I was annoyed by the assistant manager's insistence on me having to retype a very long letter. I told him that the letter would just need to be corrected and not retyped. And he told me that if I didn't want to If he retypes, he will find someone who is willing to retype it again. I was furious at the time, but when I started to retype this letter, I suddenly realized that many people would actually jump up and grab this I have a chance to do what I am doing now. Besides, I am paid to do this job. Thinking about it, I start to feel a lot better. At this time, I suddenly made up my mind that although I don’t want to I like the job, but I'm going to pretend I like it. Then I made a big discovery: If I pretend I like my job, I do like it to a certain degree; and I I also found that when I started to like my job, the speed of my work can be greatly accelerated. Therefore, I rarely work overtime now. This new work attitude makes everyone think that I am a very good employee Later, a unit supervisor needed a personal secretary, and he put me in that position because he thought I would be happy to do some extra work and never complain. This incident proves that a change in mental state can make a huge difference Power. For me, that was a very important discovery, and it did wonders for me."

Here, Miss Gordon uses the "pretend" philosophy taught by Hans Wesinger, who teaches us to "pretend" that we are happy. If you "fake" an interest in your work, a little faking will make your interest real and can reduce your fatigue, tension, and anxiety. Many years ago, Mr. Hanan Howard made a decision that turned out to change his life completely, turning a very boring job into a very interesting one.His really boring job was washing dishes, cleaning counters, and selling ice cream at the high school welfare house while the other boys played ball or dated girls.Hanan Howard was not satisfied with the job, but he had to accept it, so he decided to use this opportunity to study how ice cream is made, what ingredients are in it, and why some ice creams are better than others. tasty.

He started researching the chemistry of ice cream, and the results made him a whiz in that high school chemistry class.Later, he became very interested in food chemistry, so he entered Massachusetts State University, specializing in food nutrition.The Cocoa Company of New York later established a $100 prize for essays on applications of cocoa and chocolate, an open essay contest open to all college students.Who do you think won the first prize?Yes, it was Hanan Howard. He found it difficult to find a suitable job, so he opened a private laboratory in the basement of his home.Soon, the authorities passed a new bill: the bacteria contained in the milk must be counted.So Hanan Howard began counting bacteria for 14 milk companies in Anhurst City, for which he needed to hire two more assistants. How did he get to the top after 25 years?Yes, the few gentlemen who are still working in food chemistry experiments will either retire or have passed away by then, but there will be many young people who are just starting to learn and full of enthusiasm to take their place . Twenty-five years later, Hanan Howard may well be the leader of his profession.However, those classmates who bought ice cream from him back then were likely to be poor and even unemployed at home. They would only blame the government and say that they did not have good job opportunities.And if Hanan Howard hadn't worked hard to make a very boring job interesting, he probably wouldn't have had the same chance. A few years ago, a young man in a factory felt very boring because he stood by a garage all day making screws.His name is Sam.He really wanted to quit his job, but he was afraid that he would not be able to find another job.Since he had to do this boring job, he decided to find a way to make it interesting.So, he started to compete with another worker who was in charge of the machine. One of them would first make a large sample on his own machine, and then hand it over to the other to grind it to the specified diameter.They swap machines occasionally to see who can make more screws.They appreciated the speed and precision of Sam the foreman, and soon transferred him to a better position.And this is just the beginning of his string of promotions. Thirty years later, Sam became chairman of the Balwyn Locomotive Manufacturing Company.If he hadn't thought of making his boring job interesting, he might have been a worker all his life. The famous radio news analyst H. V. Katenborn told me how he made a boring job interesting.When he was 22 years old, he worked on a transatlantic cattle ship, watering and feeding the animals on board.Later he traveled around England by bicycle, and then went to Paris.At that time, he was penniless, poor, and had no food, so he had to pawn the camera on his body for 5 dollars. He posted a job advertisement on the Paris edition of "New York Herald" and got a job selling a stereoscope. errands.When using this kind of observation mirror to see two identical photos, a miracle will occur: the two lenses of the observation mirror superimpose the two photos into a three-dimensional photo, and the distance between the front and back can be seen, and a quite real three-dimensional sense. Katenborn had just started selling the scope door-to-door in Paris—and he didn't speak French.But in his first year he earned $5,000 in commissions, making him the highest-paid salesman in France that year.Kaltenborn told me that the experience has improved his ability to succeed more than a year at Harvard, but what about his self-confidence?After that experience, he told me, he even thought he could sell the Congressional Record to French housewives. This successful experience gave him a deep understanding of French life, which made him particularly valuable in the analysis of broadcast news, especially when it came to European events. How can he be a good salesman when he doesn't know French?It turned out to be like this. He first asked the boss to write down what he should say in pure French, and then he recited it.When he went to ring the doorbell, a housewife would answer, and Kattenborn began to recite the sales pitch.His American accent made it sound ridiculous, and he showed the pictures to the housewives.If the other person asked a question, he would shrug his shoulders and say "I'm American .Usually, the housewife would laugh, and he would laugh along with it immediately, before showing her more pictures. When Katenborn told me these things, he was very candid that the job was not easy.He told me that what kept him going was a little bit of faith—his determination to make the job interesting.Every morning before he goes out, he looks in the mirror and says to himself: "Kattenborn, if you want to eat, you must do this well. Since you must do it, why don't you do it quickly? Why? Instead of imagining yourself as an actor every time you ring the doorbell, you are standing on the stage, and there are many audiences watching you. Because what you are doing now is also like acting on the stage It's interesting, so why not have a little fun doing it, and do it with a little more enthusiasm?" Kattenborn told me that his words of encouragement were instrumental in turning a job he hated and dreaded into something he loved and made a lot of money doing. I asked Mr. Kattenborn if he could give some advice to young Americans eager to succeed?He said: "Yes. Make a bet with yourself every morning. We often feel that we need to do some exercise to wake us up from that half-asleep state; but what we need more is some mental and mental exercise. Exercise allows us to really get moving every morning, so give yourself a pep every morning." Wouldn't it be a silly, superficial, childish thing to do if we really did cheer ourselves up every morning?No, on the contrary, it is psychologically very important. "Our thoughts make our lives." This statement is as true today as it was when Marquez Oller wrote it 1,800 years ago in his book: "Our lives are what we think Caused." Say it to yourself every hour, and you can direct yourself to think many brave and joyful things, and you can gain strength and peace from it.Talk to yourself about lots of things to be grateful for, and you can fill your mind with positive thoughts. You can make any job less annoying as long as you have the right idea.Your boss wants you to be interested in your work so that he can make more money; we don’t care about what the boss needs, you should think about it, if you are interested in your work, what good can it do for you?Reminding yourself often will double the joy you get out of life because more than half of your waking hours are spent at work.If you can't find happiness in your own work, you can't find happiness anywhere else. Remind yourself constantly that taking an interest in your work will take your worries away and, in the end, may lead to promotion and salary increases.Even if things do not have the good results mentioned above, at least it can reduce your fatigue to a minimum, so that you can fully enjoy your free time.