The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1906-01-29
TO BE SUCCESSFUL.
Must Be Able to Concentrate Your
Attention Upon Some One Thing.

One Of the hackneyed figures of
! speech that is as commonly used perhaps
! " things at once" And imagine this said
/ IN petulant tone of voice and 1t VIII
recall to you how often it is said.
AS a matter of fact asserts writer In
| the London Mail, like most figures or
/ speech, 1t is quite untrue. You can think
Of twenty things at once and ii Is be-
4 cause Of that, by no means an achleVe-
T1ent to be proud of, so many men fan
/ in life, so many men stop short of reach
/ ing the summit. Any fool can think OF
twenty things at once; the lunatIc asy-
! lums are full of people who think Of
/ twenty things at once.
A wise man, a man with his brain I'M
/ der perfect control, is he who thinks OF
/ one thing at a time and keeps all sub
/ Jects foreign to that at hand locked up IN
/ little drawers in his brain.
| Faced with the business necessity of
cutting down expcr ses, b does not per-
nit his mind to wander off into senti-
mental side issues as A does. He realizes
/ at once. for instance. that he IAN save
money by going into cheaper offices, and
/ there the matter ends. In cutting off his
! East Liberty branch he does not waste
time In wondering what Smith, his East
Liberty manager, will feel about it. The
branch has been failure. 1t must go
And BIS aggregate saving of time in this
and similar business matters, as com
/ pared with AS loss of time must repre-
sent an important factor in the struggle
after.
It is not difficult to understand why a
man who has a dozen different interests.
and very few Of us have less, cannot
readily focus his mind upon che of those
| subjects to the exclusion of all the rest
| but he will do it the more readily if he
adopts system which the London Mail
writer found to work eXcellently. Let
/ him Hken his mind to a camera-a cam
| era primed ready for use; he has fixed
I L. H. 4-l-~I
ture image he intends operating. He
will know that it is impossible for him
/ to take two aspects of one picture at
once; he has one plate for one object
/ ing this picture" or, in other words, Il
/ intend dealing solely with this subject
under review. and no other" and he
| takes hold Of his wandering fancy and
steadfastly points all his thought, the
whole Of his mind, the whole of his i'm
| agtnatiOn toward that one subject, he
will have mastered the first principle OF
concentration.
Suppose you have a card with a hun
/ dred different pictures Of the size of a
! dime. Take another card perfectly blank
| OF the same size. with one hole the size
I of one of the pictures; lay your blank
| card upon the top of the other. By NOV
/ ing it about you are able to see the pic
lures, but only one at a time. Call the
hole in the card concentration and you
have an object lesson which should serve
you in good stead.
And yet. easy as L sounds, cOacentra-
ton is the most difficult thing in the
/ world to acquire.
Even when acquired in some degree the
weather will affect it. The wise employer
/ knows this. He finds il necessary to
stimulate and urge his men more in sum-
mer than in winter. It is not that they
are unwilling perhaps. But there is a
slackness in the air, a kind of creeping
! paralysis of the energies. The relaxing
heat affects the best of men physically
/ and mentally. 1t requires a strong eff
fort to ''tone up" without a spur.
Learn to read and understand difficult
literary passages amid distracting sur
rOundings.
| Learn to concentrate for five minutes
on an abstract wOrd-say wisdom" -
without thinking Of any Of the things
the word suggests. CThis is one of the
most difficult exercises.)
Think of a concrete thing-a flower for
} instance, without allowing your mind to
wander to any Of the mind pictures sug-
| gested by a flower, such as fields, gar
| (How quickly the mind gets off the
| track will be best illustrated by the fol-
! lowing sequence Of thoughts described by
novice: A daisy. field, cow, milk.
a milkman, a London street an omnibus
/ a conductor. a railway arch Oudgate
/ HID, street hawker, German toy, the
/ Alps, an accident, a newspaper, an ad-
vertsement dress, a dance. a man,
! etc.
! Learn to suppress the irritation that
comes from doing the uncongenial but
necessary thing.
Do not build air castles when you ought
| to be making bricks for cottages.
Do not dream between 9 a. m. and 6
p.
Do the thing you ought to do at once
at once.
/ Finish what you are doing as though
| that thing was the browning work of
| your life
The man who thinks of millions usually
counts his monthly salary in two fig
| ures.