The Secret of the Ages
Highlights
- The Formula Of Success
You know from your own experience that under proper mental conditions of joy or enthusiasm, you can do three or four times the work without fatigue that you can ordinarily. Tiredness is more boredom than actual physical fatigue. You can work almost indefinitely when the work is a pleasure.
- This One Thing I Do
“Remember that a horse is an animal of one idea. You can teach him only one thing at a time.”
Looking back, I’d say the only thing wrong with his instruction was that he took in too Little territory. He need not have confined himself to the horse. Most humans are the same way.
In fact, you can put ALL humans into that class if you want a thing done well. For you cannot divide your thought and do justice to any one of the different subjects you are thinking of. You’ve got to do one thing at a time. The greatest success rule I know in business—the one that should be printed over every man’s desk, is—“This One Thing I Do.” Take one piece of work at a time. Concentrate on it to the exclusion of all else. Then finish it!
- This One Thing I Do
The truths which mankind has been laboriously learning through countless ages, at who knows what price of sweat and toil and starvation and blood—all are yours for the effort of reading them.
And in business, knowledge was never so priceless or so easily acquired. Books and magazines are filled with the hows and whys, the rights and wrongs of buying and selling, of manufacturing and shipping, of finance and management. They are within the reach of anyone with the desire to KNOW.
- This One Thing I Do
You’d be surprised at how much more work you can get through by carefully planning it, and then taking each bit in order and disposing of it before starting on the next.
- This One Thing I Do
Another thing—once started at work, don’t let down. Keep on going until it is time to quit. You know how much power it takes to start an auto that is standing motionless. But when you get it going, you can run along in high at a fraction of the expenditure of gas. It is the same way with your mind. We are all mentally lazy. We hate to start using our minds. Once started, though, it is easy to keep along on high, if only we won’t let down. For the moment we let down, we have that starting to do all over again. You can accomplish ten times as much, with far less effort or fatigue, if you will keep right on steadily instead of starting and stopping, and starting and stopping again.
- This One Thing I Do
Volumes have been written about personal efficiency, and general efficiency, and every other kind of efficiency in business. But boiled down, it all comes to this:
1—Know what you want.
2—Analyze the thing you’ve got to do to get it.
3—Plan your work ahead.
4—Do one thing at a time.
5—Finish that one thing and send it on its way before starting the next.
6—Once started, KEEP GOING! And when you come to some problem that “stumps” you, give your subconscious mind a chance.
- This One Thing I Do
advice to prepare at the close of each day’s business, a List of the ten most important things for the next day. To this I would add: Run them over in the mind just before going to sleep, not thoughtfully, or with elaboration of detail, but with the sure knowledge that the deeper centers of the mind are capable of viewing them constructively even though conscious attention is surrendered in sleep.
- This One Thing I Do
“You can do as much as you think you can, But you’ll never accomplish more; If you’re afraid of yourself, young man, There’s little for you in store. For failure comes from the inside first, It’s there, if we only knew it, And you can win, though you face the worst, If you feel that you’re going to do it.” —Edgar A. Guest.
- This One Thing I Do
“The man who is perpetually hesitating which of two things he will do first,” says William Wirt, “will do neither. The man who resolves, but suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of a friend—who fluctuates from plan to plan and veers like a weather-cock to every point of the compass with every breath of caprice that blows—can never accomplish anything real or useful. It is only the man who first consults wisely, then resolves firmly, and then executes his purpose with inflexible perseverance, undismayed by those petty difficulties that daunt a weaker spirit, that can advance to eminence in any line.”
- This One Thing I Do
Everything in the world, even a great business, can be resolved into atoms. And the basic principles behind the biggest business will be found to be the same as those behind the successful running of the corner newsstand. The whole practice of commerce is founded upon them. Any man can learn them, but only the alert and energetic can apply them. The trouble with most men is that they think they have done all that is required of them when they have earned their salary.
Why, that’s only the beginning. Up to that point, you are working for someone else. From then on, you begin to work for yourself. Remember, you must give to get. And it is when you give that extra bit of time and attention and thought to your work that you begin to stand out above the crowd around you.