# How to Use Your Mind/Formation of Study-habits

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CHAPTER IV FORMATION OF STUDY-HABITS
As already intimated, this book adopts the view that education is a process of forming habits in the brain. In the formation of habits there are several principles that must be observed. Accordingly we shall devote a chapter to the consideration of habits in general before discussing the specific habits involved in various kinds of study.
Habit may be defined roughly as the tendency to act time after time in the same way. Thus defined, you see that the force of habit extends throughout the entire universe. It is a habit for the earth to revolve on its axis once every twenty-four hours and to encircle the sun once every year. When a pencil falls from your hand it has a habit of dropping to the floor. A piece of paper once folded tends to crease in the same place. These ​Page:Harry Dexter Kitson - How to Use Your Mind, 2d ed. - (1921).djvu/62 ​Page:Harry Dexter Kitson - How to Use Your Mind, 2d ed. - (1921).djvu/63 ​Page:Harry Dexter Kitson - How to Use Your Mind, 2d ed. - (1921).djvu/64 ​Page:Harry Dexter Kitson - How to Use Your Mind, 2d ed. - (1921).djvu/65 ​Page:Harry Dexter Kitson - How to Use Your Mind, 2d ed. - (1921).djvu/66 ​Page:Harry Dexter Kitson - How to Use Your Mind, 2d ed. - (1921).djvu/67 ​Page:Harry Dexter Kitson - How to Use Your Mind, 2d ed. - (1921).djvu/68 ​Page:Harry Dexter Kitson - How to Use Your Mind, 2d ed. - (1921).djvu/69 ​Page:Harry Dexter Kitson - How to Use Your Mind, 2d ed. - (1921).djvu/70 ​Page:Harry Dexter Kitson - How to Use Your Mind, 2d ed. - (1921).djvu/71 ​Page:Harry Dexter Kitson - How to Use Your Mind, 2d ed. - (1921).djvu/72 ​Page:Harry Dexter Kitson - How to Use Your Mind, 2d ed. - (1921).djvu/73 ​Page:Harry Dexter Kitson - How to Use Your Mind, 2d ed. - (1921).djvu/74 ​Page:Harry Dexter Kitson - How to Use Your Mind, 2d ed. - (1921).djvu/75 ​would be and what a task living would be if you had to learn to write anew every morning when you go to class; or if you had to relearn how to tie your necktie every day? The burden of living would be intolerable.
The last advantage to be discerned in habit is economy. Habitual acts do not have to be actively directed by consciousness. While they are being performed, consciousness may be otherwise engaged. "The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work." While you are brushing your hair or tying your shoes, your mind may be engaged in memorizing poetry or calculating arithmetical problems. Habit is thus a great economizer.
The ethical consequences of habit are so striking that before leaving the subject we must give them acknowledgment. We can do no better than to turn to the state​ment by Professor James, whose wise remarks upon the subject have not been improved upon:
"The physiological study of mental conditions is thus the most powerful ally of hortatory ethics. The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't count this time!' Well! he may not count it and a kind heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering it, and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do ​is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of course this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent drunkards by so many drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific, spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work. But let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning, to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he has singled out. Silently, between all the details of his business, the power of judging in all that class of matter will have built itself up within him as a possession that will never pass away. Young people should know the truth of this in advance. The ignorance of it has probably engendered more discouragement and faint- heartedness in youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put together."
Exercise
Exercise 1. Point out an undesirable habit that you are determined to eradicate. Describe the desirable habit which you will adopt in its place. Give the concrete steps you will take in forming the new habit. How long a time do you estimate will be required for the formation of the new habit? Mark down the date and refer back to it when you have formed the habit, to see how accurately you estimated.