New Britain herald., 1922-01-05
Period or Activity

! NiSlOn, ne sand IS fhHnlnB SlehullS, | We can see how much has triekled away. we cannot see how much is l still to come. Is 1t this uncertainty that causes our constant cry for more | time-more time? Oh, for another | hour in the day-another day in the month, another month in the year aye. more years of life. So much, to do-so little done
 "Iow many of you have made a budget of your years? How many Of you have set up marI ar q series ol marks fixing the time by which certain definite developments In your business or personal affairs must be accomplished In default of so pre- else a scheme. how many of you are in the habit of analyzipg and dissect- ing your business methods from time to time to see whether you are run | hing on q schedule fast enough to get you where you want to land be- fore you are shunted on the eternal side track?
 Importance Of Time
 l T think it has been useful to us, by way of foundation, to bring our. l SELVES lO d SODeT IedliZdllOH oI lut tremendous importance of the time factor In our business lives, and these considerations bring us face to face with the practical question as to | how additional time may be gained.
 T recently happened to see an ar ticle in which the writer said: You cannot manufacture time; you cannot create days Quite true, if he meant that you cannot cause the sun to rise and set more often than 1t does, or | that you cannot manufacture addi- | tional calendar months or yearS;- but this is what l am here to say to you today: You can create days, you can create months and years. you can manufacture time, in the sense that time is measured not by the calendar but by the sum of It's useful and profitable employment, and I now want to show you, in what I shall try to make very practical and natter of-fact way, how 1t can be done.
 When you go on business trip you plan to call on a given number of customers. The more quickly you can get through with each individual cus- toner, the more time you will have to see others that may not have been on your original schedule, or the earl fer you may return home to devote yourselves to other business. So in your entire business life, the more quickly you can dispose of each in- dividual one of your business trans actions, the sooner you can pass on the next one, and consequently the more transactions you can undertake and the more business you can do.
 Units of Transaction.
 "rhe sum of your business activity is made up of the units represented by your individual business transac- tions. To swell it you must have more units. To have more units each separate unit must step livelier to get out of the way of those that are to follow. The unit can be made to move faster only in one way, and that is by reducing the time consum- ed in completing it.
 ''The whole problem therefore Is to take the waste time out of the unit of business activity. Let us see how this may be done. I can perhaps best | lying principle of which can be ap- piled to everyone's business, even though the specific factors assumed may not be the same in every actual case.
 Average Transactions.
 "A study of the business of con- siderable number of representative mercantile and industrial concerns, not engaged in a speculative business or in dealing in perishabe goods, demonstrated that the average firm has an average of two transactions per week with each of it's customers or correspondents. Let us take that figure. therefore, for the purpose of illustration; it may be more or less in your particular business, but it | holds good as an average. AS the sec ond factor of the example, we will take the fact that from the time a letter is written until it reaches the addressee a minimum average time of 24 hours elapses. This means that while that letter is on it's way, the transaction to which it relates is at a standstill and it's ultimate consum- nation is retarded by "A hours of dead time.
 | Now, how can that wasted time be taken out of this unit of business activity? Obviously by eliminating the time unnecessarily wasted in the transit of communications. In other words, if instead of writing the letter the telegraph were used, the period of dead time would be eliminated and the completion of the transaction shortened to that extent. Suppose then that in each Of the transactions with one individual customer the firm used the telegraph instead of the mail. In the course of year, say 50 business weeks, it would cut out a minimum of 100 days of lost time in it's dealings with that customer. If now we go step further and as sume that the firm did the same thing in it's transactions with all the GUS toners constituting it's entire business activity, the result would be the shortening of the aggregate time con snmed in all it's transactions during the year by minimum of 100 days.
 Gain of Time.
 "Of course this does not mean that the firm will have done it's years business in 200 days and have 100 clear calendar days, but it does mean an actual gain of 100 days of oppor- tunity to do additional business; 1t does mean that, as each Of the trans actions is got out Of the way more quickly, the firm will be free to turn to other and new enterprises. Neither t-a ad n Ga n