an automobile, so great is the difficulty encountered that the general manager himself must take a hand in directing the muscles. Under continued repetition, however, the nerve cells shape themselves in a more definite order-the action is controlled by sub-officials-until finally a habit is formed. As the motor car ahead of ours stops, we put pressure on the brake without in the least disturbing those creative business plans our cerebrum may be shaping up.

This process by which actions that are often repeated come to be automatic, the process of the formation of habits, is going on all the time. It is regular and inevitable.

The Efficient versus the Inefficient Way

The efficient man keeps the big things in mind, as we have said, but he also keeps his mind free and open about themdoes not let himself form habits about matters of great importance. But the little things he standardizes according to a well-considered plan.

The inefficient man does not reduce to habit the routine tasks of the day. The writing of every letter, the O K'ing of every order, the use of particular pencils or pens, the time of going out to lunch, the things he will eat, are to him all subjects of express volitional deliberation. His mind is ever harassed and distracted, and the reason is simple; the general manager is doing office boy work.

Every useful action possible, such as ways of dressing, eating, working, in short, all the minor details of existence, should be made automatic and habitual. All such matters can then be turned over to the lower nervous systems for attention, leaving the general manager unfettered to transact the main business of life. The nervous system is designed for this very purpose and the man who would be efficient takes advantage of its wonderfully simple yet adequate organization.

The insistence in former chapters upon what the reader may have considered small matters, is here explained. The man who does not keep the clips or the stamps or the envelopes in certain definite places has to call in the higher brain center when he wants to find one of them. The man who does not "make a note of it," who refuses to employ a secretary, who will not use a filing system, also is insisting that the general manager do all the work.

Double Waste

There is another side to the matter. It is doubly wasteful for the general manager to do office boy work: he is kept from doing his own work and he is less efficient at the routine work than the boy is. When a person has to put his conscious will upon braking the automobile he will not do it nearly so well as when it is taken care of by the automatic centers. So with every operation in life. Practice makes perfect, we say. The reason is that with practice an activity is taken. over by the lower nerve centers, swift, steady, and serene.

In the mental life quite as truly as among large corporations, there is need for both general manager and office boy. But neither should do the other's work.

Productive Power Capitalized

The various plans outlined in previous chapters at times have called for the substitution in place of one's familiar ruleof-thumb method of standards more or less new. And it is true that this demand for substitution calls into action the higher brain centers and for the time being is inefficient. But not for long. The new habit is in truth an investment which once made will pay dividends long into the future. "Prove all things," said the Apostle who reached every rank of people, but "hold fast that which is good."

Whoever imbibes deeply in his nervous tissues the habits

of truthfulness, cleanliness, industry, kindness, appreciation, moral integrity and hope, later lives upon these habits without price and without effort. Likewise he who by the sweat of his brow raises himself to a new level of personal efficiency henceforth shall receive dividends from the most gilt-edge of securities-his own productive power capitalized as efficiency habits.

In making such habits a man's own, there are certain simple rules which if followed will be of great assistance. Some of these rules are discussed on the following pages.

Habits Inevitable; Which Kind?

In thinking over habits it is well to recognize that the nervous system as we grow older becomes less plastic. "Already at the age of twenty-five," says William James, "you see the professional mannerism settling down on the young commercial traveler, on the young doctor, on the young minister, on the young counselor-at-law. You see the little lines of cleavage running through the character, the tricks of thought, the prejudices, the ways of the 'shop,' in a word, from which the man can by-and-by no more escape than his coat-sleeve can suddenly fall into a new set of folds. On the whole, it is best he should not escape. It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.”

As far-sighted personal managers intent upon developing effectiveness in the highest degree, into what kinds of producing methods shall we allow our nervous system gradually to harden? Into methods hit upon by chance? Then the attainment of our goal being left to accident, we are as mariners without compass ever on the verge of shipwreck.

Right methods are not the result of chance, but the product of careful analysis and constructive thought. These right methods are called standards, the summum bonum in all at

tempts to attain efficiency and the real goal in the formation of habits.

Standardization is the first step in the formation of habits.

Thought Followed by Action

The standard must not remain merely a thought, an abstraction over which in the mental world we can sentimentalize and dream ourselves into the fond notion that somewhere, sometime, we really shall become efficient. "Hell is paved with good intentions." The efficient man sets about attaining his effectiveness now, and he attacks the first problem feasible no matter how small; he does not wait for the new year with its resolutions, nor until he be promoted to his present superior's desk.

"The actual presence of the practical opportunity," says Bahnsen, "alone furnishes the fulcrum upon which the lever can rest, by means of which the moral will may multiply its strength, and raise itself aloft. He who has no solid ground to press against will never get beyond the stage of empty gesture-making."

When the resolution to accomplish seizes you, when the glow of inspiration permeates your being through and through, reach for a sheet of paper and write down at least one specific, concrete order to yourself. Impractical, nerveless sentimentalism, spineless indecision will then be avoided, and your fine resolution will begin to bear practical fruit.

The habits you aspire to gain are reached not by moralizing or theorizing but through concrete acts.

Keeping Fully "Sold" On a Subject

Salesmen are all familiar with the prospect who is about to sign on the dotted line, then suddenly draws back. Sometimes he signs but changes his mind and cancels the order before the salesman can get away; sometimes he wires

the house the cancellation, sometimes he refuses the shipment, sometimes he returns the goods. In all these cases the salesman explains the difficulty by saying the prospect was not fully "sold."

It is the same in forming habits; resolution is necessary, you must fully "sell" yourself on the new habit. "Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall re-enforce the right motives," says William James, "put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelop your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur so soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all."

Enter into the new habit with every possible incentive and resolution.

The Road to Full Efficiency

The best of incentives in the formation of habits is success. The man who dispatches an extraordinary day's work is thereby encouraged to surpass himself still further; the man who exceeds a hard schedule feels confident of his power to negotiate a harder schedule; success has encouraged him.

Success, however, is precisely what the efficiency enthusiast is most likely to deny himself. With a sudden realization of the heights to which he may attain, he draws up an impossible plan. Failure is inevitable, a gruesome failure, for the wicked habits just swept out return pell-mell, multiplied in number like the seven devils of old. The aspirant for efficiency has been ruined by attempting too much.

In acquiring habits we are in the presence of two hostile powers: one the new standard, the other the old rule-of-thumb method. "It is necessary, above all things, in such a situa