EFFICIENCY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4219, 4 December 1939, Page 7

EFFICIENCY

“THE SAME OLD THING.” A vast number of people make a failure of their lives because they lost interest in their jobs and their homes. They say—“ What’s the use? It is the same old thing.” They are “fed up” with the commonplace things of everyday life. They want a change. They want something different. They see nothing interesting in their surroundings. Of course they don’t, because they look with dull eyes. • They are neither successful nor happy, and they have only themselves to blame. They have the wrong attitude towards life. They want to be entertained. Their real wish is for amusement, usually. And so they go to the cinemas to forget the commonplace facts of their own lives. From the point of view of Efficiency, this is a very important fact. The one best cure for being “fed up” with ordinary things is Efficiency. I venture to say that there is not one efficient man or woman in Great Britain who is “fed up” with his job. Efficiency teaches us to notice the common things—to study our jobs—to make improvements. It sharpens our eyes, so that we really see what is going on around us. We see the ordinary wastes, leaks and losses —the “obvious” things that most people never see. Most people work in a trance of habit. They do to-day exactly what they did yesterday. And Efficiency wakens them up from this trance. Whenever a man has lost interest in his work and in the people whom he meets, the cause is within. It is in his own mind. There is no good reason why life should be boring and montonous anybody. If a man will only stop looking in at his own inert brain and feeble wishes if he will only look

outside, at work to be improved and at people to be helped, be will soon find life interesting. I do not remember a day in my life when 1 was bored or “fed up.” Even when I was poor, even when I came down to my last 20s, I thought that life was a wonderful thing. He has stopped thinking and learning. His brain has slowed down. He is on his way to become one of the robots of the rank and file* Of all the ghastly things that can happen to a man, the worst and most inexcusable is to lose interest in life. I would far sooner lose a leg, or two or three ribs, than lose my interest in my work and in the people I see every day. The “same old thing” can be made interesting by variations. When the brain is alive and when the heart still has its feelings, all the common experiences of the day are vividly interesting. Scores of fortunes have been made by men who noticed common things. And millions of people are happier because they look with keen and friendly eyes at the little common incidents of home life. So if a man is finding his life and his work dull and stale and uninteresting, he should blame himself. We have all tod few years of precious life- and we should make the most of them. \