Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1918-06-18
INTEREST AND ATTENTION
By H. Addington Bruce

is familiar saying that attention is bred by
interest Equally true is it to say that in
terest is bred by attention.
This latter is something many people forget.
Yet everybody ought to KEEP it steadily in mind
For it is fact of the most practical importance.
Apply it to your
You are a travelling salesman, anxious to
make a good record, to increase your sales from
year to year. and to develop ideas that VIII stead
lily raise your earning power.
Long ago a friends suggested to you that you
might find the study of psychology really helpful to
you in business way.
You rejected the suggestion.
Psychology, you were sure, an abstruse
science, of no practical use to any one. Also you
were sure it would be beyond your understand
ing, for you had been to college. And anyway
you were in the least interested in psychology
and did not believe you could ever become inter-
ed in it.
But what are the facts?
Psychology is in one abstruse science,
yet is of practical use in every vocation.
One does not have to go to college in order to
obtain working knowledge of its principles.
And if a will only make real effort to
study psychology attentively he will ere long md
himself becoming more and more interested In IT,
Here is an experiment commend to you:
The next time you start on the road put in
your grip couple of psychological handoooks,
Boris Sidis's Psychology of Suggestion ana tne
one-volume edition of William James's principles
of Psychology" will be excellent for your pur-
pose.
They will take up no more space than mys-
terry novel and a fiction magazine, and will far
more repay you for reading them And you VIII
in the evenings. ~ ..
Devote some time 20 them EVERY DAY. II
only half an hour. Occasionally put in an entlre
evening at these books instead OF lounglng ann
lessIy in the hotel lobby killing time at musl-
cal comedy
At first you may find this pretty dull-fully as
dull as you expected to find it.
But peg away. Presently your attitude will
begin to change. The science which you thought
abstruse and incomprehensible will present itself
to you in a more favorable light.
You will be pleased to discover that certain
ideas you have formed regarding human nature.
gained from personal observation and applied in
your business life, confirmed by the hand
books.
Also you will discover. not without pleasure.
that the handbooks are helping you to greater in
sight into human nature than you possessed be-
fore, which is most desirable from business
point of view.
And thereafter-if you are really in earnest
about wanting to neutrality-suspicious. will interest
you as you never dreamed it would. You will
even begin to visit public Libraries to make &C
quantance with special works in business psychol-
ogy.
All this. observe, will come as the result OF
determinedIv paving attention to psychology.
SIMILAR RESULT MAY RE EXPECTED FROM
ATTENTION PERSISTFNTLY DIRECTED TO
THE STUDY OF ANY OTHER USEFUL SUBJECT
Don't continue to he wholly guided by interest
in the choosing of things which will stimulate
and guide you to interests worth while
Copyright, 1918, by the Associated Newspapers)