The ingredients of successful work

The ingredients of successful work

The ingredients of successful work are:

- training and experience in the subject being addressed

- good general intelligence and ability

- a capability of high affinity

- a tolerance of reality

- and the ability to communicate and receive ideas

Given these things there is left only a slim chance of failure. Given these things a man can ignore all of the accidents of birth, marriage or fortune, for birth, marriage and fortune are not capable of placing these necessary ingredients in one’s hands. One could have all the money in the world and yet be unable to perform an hour’s honest labor. Such a man would be a miserably unhappy one.

To eat we must have a job. To live we must continue to be acceptable on our jobs. To better ourselves we must hope for the breaks. And it all appears a huge, disheartening confusion composed of accidents, good luck and bad luck, or drudgery with nothing to win at the end of it.

Work and security are parts of life. If life is not understood then neither will these parts of life be understood. If all life seems chaotic, a matter of guess and chance, then certainly work will seem chaotic.

But the role of work in existence is a greater role than any other. Some say we spend a third of our lives in bed and therefore beds are important. But we spend more than a third of our lives at work and if we don’t work we don’t have a bed, so it seems that work is more important by far. If you add up the various parts of life, love or sports or entertainment, you will find that the majority of concentration is not on any of these but upon WORK. Work is the major role of our existences whether we like it or not. If we don’t like it we don’t like life.

All right. Work-security, then, is important. But security itself is an understanding. Insecurity is UNKNOWNNESS. When one is Insecure, he simply doesn’t know. He is not sure. Men who KNOW are secure. Men who don’t know believe in luck. One is made insecure by not knowing whether or not he is going to be sacked. Thus he worries. And so it is with all insecurity. INSECURITY EXISTS IN THE ABSENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. All security derives from knowledge.

HANDLING THE CONFUSIONS OF THE WORK-A-DAY WORLD


If you were to stand in heavy traffic you would be likely to feel confused by all the motion whizzing around you. If you were to stand in a heavy storm, with leaves and papers flying by, you would be likely to be confused. Is it possible to actually understand a confusion? Is there any such thing as an “anatomy of confusion”? Yes, there is.

If, as a switchboard operator, you had ten calls hitting your board at once, you might feel confused. But is there any answer to the situation? If as a shop foreman you have three emergencies and an accident all at the same time, you might feel confused. But is there any answer to that?

A confusion is only a confusion so long as ALL particles are in motion. A confusion is only a confusion so long as no factor is clearly defined or understood. Confusion is the basic cause of stupidity. To the stupid all things except the very simple ones are confused. Thus if one knew the anatomy of confusion, no matter how bright one might be, he would be brighter.

If you have ever had to teach some young aspirant who was not too bright, you will understand this well. You attempt to explain how such-and-so works. You go over it and over it and over it. And then you turn him loose and he promptly makes a complete botch of it. He “didn’t understand”, he “didn’t grasp it”. You can simplify your understanding of his misunderstanding by saying, very rightly, “he was confused”. Ninety-nine percent of all education fails, when it fails, on the grounds that the student was confused.

In teaching a boy to run a machine, don’t throw a torrent of data at him and then point out his errors; that’s confusion to him, that makes him respond stupidly. Find some entrance point to his confusion, ONE DATUM. Tell him, “This is a machine.” It may be that all the directions were flung at someone who had no real certainty, no real order of existence. “This is a machine,” you say. Then make him sure of it. Make him feel it, fiddle with it, push at it. “This is a machine,” tell him. And you’d be surprised how long it may take but you’d be surprised as well how his certainty increases.

There is GOOD control and BAD control. The difference between them is Certainty and Uncertainty. Good control is certain, positive, predictable. Bad control is uncertain, variable and unpredictable. With good control one can be certain, with bad control one is never certain. A foreman who makes a rule effective today but not” tomorrow, who makes George obey but not James, is exercising bad control; in that foreman’s wake will come uncertainty and insecurity, no matter what his personal attributes may be.

The difference between good and bad control then becomes more obvious. The difference between good and bad here is DEGREE. A thorough positive control can be predicted by others. Therefore it is good control. A non-positive, sloppy control cannot be predicted; therefore it is a bad control. Intention also has something to do with control. Control can be used for constructive purposes or destructive purposes; but you will discover that when destructive purposes are INTENDED, bad control is used.