Capitalizing Experience - Habit Formation : Part 1

Increasing Efficiency In Business: A Contribution to the Psychology of Business
by Walter Dill Scott, Ph.D.

(Page 13 of 16)

After spending four years in an Eastern college, a young graduate was put in charge of a group of day laborers. He assumed toward them the attitude of the athletic director and the coach combined. He set out to develop a winning team, one that could handle more cubic yards of dirt in a day than any other group on the job.

He had no guidebook and no official records to direct him. He did not know what the best "form" was for shoveling dirt, and he did not know how much a good man could accomplish in an hour. With stop watch and notebook in hand, he began to observe the movements of the man who seemed the best worker in the group. He counted the different movements made in handling a shovelful of dirt, and the exact time required for each of the movements. He then made similar observations upon other men. He found that the best man was making fewer movements and faster movements than his companions. But he also discovered that even this best workman was making movements which were not necessary, and that he was making some movements too slowly and thus losing the advantage of the momentum which a higher speed would have produced, and which would have enabled him to accomplish the task with less effort.

The young collegian then set about to standardize the necessary movements and the most economical speed for each movement required in the work of his group. He instructed his best man in the improved method of working, and offered him a handsome bonus if he would follow the specifications and accomplish the task in the estimated time. The man, eager to earn the increase, followed the directions closely, and in a few weeks was enabled to accomplish more than twice the work of the average workman. The improved habit of working was then taught the other workmen, and the result was a winning team.

The success of the young collegian did not get into the colored supplements of the daily press, but it was heralded by mechanical engineers as marking an epoch in the industrial advance of humanity. It made manifest the necessity of a study of habits, the elimination of the useless ones, and the acquisition of those most beneficial.

The study of habit has not received from the practical business man the attention which it deserves because he has too often looked upon habit as something detrimental to efficiency. The possession of any and of all habits has at times been regarded as a misfortune.

An employer of men for responsible positions recently made this inquiry concerning each applicant for a position, "Does he have any habits? If so, what are they?" This employer confused all habits with such things as habits of intemperance, habits of slovenliness, habits of dishonesty, and habits of loafing. Little did he suspect that the habits of the men were in reality their strongest recommendation. He did not realize that the capitalized experience of these men was funded in the masses of useful habits which they had acquired.

Habits are but ways of thinking and of acting which by reason of frequent repetition have become more or less automatic. We are all creatures of habit; we all possess both good and bad habits.

In performing an habitual act we do not pay attention to the individual separate steps included in the act. So we are liable to think of our habitual acts as those done carelessly, and of other acts as those performed with caution and consideration. The folly of such a criticism of habit is made apparent by the study of any act which may be performed by one person as a habit and by another person as an act every step of which demands attention. A barber stropping his razor is a familiar illustration of the working of habit. An adult attempting to strop a razor for the first time and compelled to give attention to each step in the process is a typical illustration of an act demanding attention in contrast with an habitual act which needs no such attention.

We are also inclined to deprecate habits on the ground that the man in the grip of habit is hopelessly in the rut, that the man who has reduced his work to habit ceases to be original and is incapable of further improvement. On the contrary, the grip of habit is but a support. The editor could not write his trenchant editorials, and the advertiser could not write his compelling copy, unless in the act of writing each could turn over to habit the manipulation of the pen, the formation of the letters, and the spelling of the words. The attorney cannot make his most logical arguments and the salesman cannot make the best presentation of his goods, unless they can depend upon habit for correct verbal expressions, unless their thoughts clothe themselves automatically in appropriate verbal forms. When we are in the grip of habit, if it be a good habit, we are not so much in a rut as on the steel rails where alone the greatest progress is made possible. We are not enslaved by good habits, but rather might it be said that no man is truly free to advance and to make rapid progress till he has succeeded in establishing a mass of useful habits.

How Habits are Formed

Modern physiological psychology has dealt with the problem of explaining the possibility of the formation and maintenance of habits. The explanation is found in the mutual development of the mind and the nervous system and in the dependence of thought and action upon the nervous system, and particularly upon the brain. To understand habit we must look beyond thought and action and consider some of the fundamental characteristic features of the nervous system. One such characteristic is the plasticity of the nervous substance. If I bend a piece of paper and crease it, the crease will remain even after the paper is straightened out again. The paper is plastic, and plasticity means simply that the substance offers some resistance to adopting a new form, but that when the new form is once impressed upon the substance it is retained. Some effort is required to overcome the plasticity of the paper and to form the crease, but when it is once formed the plasticity of the paper preserves the crease.

Modern conceptions of psychology have emphasized the intimate relationship existing between our thoughts and our brains. Every time we think, a slight change takes place in the delicate nerve-cells in some part of the brain. Every action among these cells leaves its indelible mark, or crease. Just as it is easy for the paper to bend where it has been creased before, it is likewise easy for action to take place in the brain where it has taken place before.

The brain may also be likened to the cylinder or disk used in a dictating machine and in phonographs, and a thought likened to the needle making the original record. It takes some energy to force the needle through the substance of the cylinder, but thereafter it moves along the opened groove with a minimum of resistance. In a similar way it is easy to think the old thought or to perform the old act, but it is most difficult to be original in thinking and in acting. When an idea has been thought or an act performed many times, the crease or groove becomes so well established that thinking or acting along that crease or groove is easier than other thoughts or actions, and so this easier one may be said to have become habitual. In a very real sense the thoughts and actions form the brain by means of the delicate physical changes which they produce; and then, when the brain is formed, its plasticity is so great that it determines our future thinking and acting.

About the Author

Walter Dill Scott (1869-1955) was one of the first applied psychologists. He applied psychology to various business practices such as personnel selection and advertising. In 1900 he was appointed instructor of psychology and education and director of the psychological laboratory at Northwestern University. In 1905, Dr. Scott was made professor of psychology and head of the department of psychology.