Successward: A Young Man's Book for Young Men. Edward William Bok
all the time why his employer does not recognize his value and advance his salary. "I do everything I am told to do," he argues, "and I do it well. What more can I do?"
This is simply a type of a young man who exists in thousands of offices and stores. He comes to his work each day with no definite point or plan in view; he leaves it with nothing accomplished. He is a mere automaton. Let him die, and his position can be filled in twenty-four hours. If he detracts nothing from his employer's business he certainly adds nothing to it. He never advances an idea; is absolutely devoid of creative powers; his position remains the same after he has been in it for five years as when he came to it.
Now I would not for a moment be understood as belittling the value of faithfulness in an employee. But, after all, faithfulness is nothing more nor less than a negative quality. By faithfulness a man can hold a position a lifetime. He will keep it just where he found it. But by the exercise of this single quality he does not add to the importance of the position any more than he adds to his own value. It is not enough that it should be said of a young man that he is faithful; he must be something more. The willingness and capacity to be faithful to the smallest detail must be there, serving only, however, as a foundation upon which other qualities are built.
Altogether too many young men are content to remain in the positions in which they find themselves. The thought of studying the needs of the next position just above them never seems to enter into their minds. I believe it is possible for every young man to rise above his position, and I care not how humble that position may be, nor under what disadvantages he may be placed. But he must be alert. He must not be afraid of work, and of the hardest kind of work. He must study not only to please, but he must go a step beyond. It is essential, of course, that he should first of all fill the position for which he is engaged. No man can solve the problem of business before he understands the rudiments of the problem itself. Once the requirements of a position are understood and mastered, then its possibilities should be undertaken. It is foolish to argue, as some young men do, that to go beyond one's special position is made impossible by an employer. The employer never existed who will prevent the cream of his establishment from rising to the surface. The advance of an employee always means the advance of the employer's interest. Every employer would rather pay a young man five thousand dollars a year than five hundred. What is to the young man's interests is in a far greater degree to the interests of his employer. A five-hundred-dollar clerkship is worth just that amount to an employer, and nothing more. But a five-thousand-dollar man is fully worth five times that sum to a business. A young man makes of a position exactly what he chooses, either a millstone around his neck or a stepping-stone to larger success. The possibilities lie in every position; seeing and embracing them rest with its occupant. The lowest position can be so filled as to lead up to the next and become a part of it. One position should only be the chrysalis for the development of new strength to master the other just above it.
A substantial success means several things. It calls, in the first place, for concentration. There is no truth so potent as that which tells us that we cannot serve God and Mammon. Nor can any young man successfully serve two business interests, no matter how closely allied; in fact, the more closely the interests the more dangerous are they. The human mind is capable of just so much clear thought, and generally it does not extend beyond the requirements of one position in these days of keen competition. If there exists a secret of success, it lies, perhaps, in concentration more than in any other single element. During business hours a man should be in business. His thoughts should be on nothing else. Diversions of thought are killing to the best endeavors. The successful mastery of business questions calls for a personal interest, a forgetfulness of self, that can only come from the closest application and the most absolute concentration. I go so far in my belief of concentration to business interests in business hours as to argue that a young man's personal letters have no right to come to his office address, nor should he receive his social friends at his desk. Business hours are none too long in the great majority of our offices, and with a rest of one hour for luncheon, no one has a right to chop off fifteen minutes here to read an irrelevant personal letter, or fifteen minutes there to talk with a friend whose conversation distracts the mind from the problems before it. Digression is just as dangerous as stagnation in the career of a young man in business. There is absolutely no position worth the having in business life to-day to which a care of other interests can be added. Let a man attempt to serve the interests of one master, and if he serves him well he has his hands and his head full.
There is a class of ambitious young men who have what they choose to call "an anchor to the windward" in their business; that is, they maintain something in addition to their regular position. They do this from necessity, they claim. One position does not offer sufficient scope for their powers or talents, does not bring them sufficient income; they are "forced," they explain, to take on something in addition. I have known such young men. But so far as I have been able to discern, the trouble does not lie so much with the position they occupy as with themselves. When a man turns away from the position he holds to outside affairs, he turns just so far away from the surest path of success. To do one thing perfectly is better than to do two things only fairly well. It was told me once, of one of our best-known actors, that outside of his stage-knowledge he knew absolutely nothing. But he acted well – so well that he stands to-day at the head of his profession, and has an income of five figures several times over. All-around geniuses are rare – so rare that we can hardly find them. It is a pleasant thing to be able to talk well on many topics; but, after all, that is but a social accomplishment. To know one thing absolutely means material success and commercial and mental superiority. I dare say that if some of our young men understood the needs of the positions they occupy more fully than they do, the necessity for outside work would not exist.
Right in line with this phase of a young man's work comes the necessity of his learning that he cannot do evening work and be employed the entire day as well. It is the most difficult thing for ambitious young men to understand that night-work is physically and mentally detrimental to the best business success. Let a machine run night and day, and before long it will break down; and what a mechanism of iron and steel cannot bear, the human organism certainly cannot stand. If a young man employs his evenings for work, he unfits himself for his work during the day. The mind needs diversion, recreation, rest; and any mentality kept at a certain tension for more than seven or eight hours per day will sooner or later lose its keen perceptive powers. No young man true to his best and wisest interests will employ his evenings in the same line of thought as that which engrosses him during the day. Mental work is unlike manual labor in that it tires without physical exhaustion; and because the worker does not feel it as much when he uses his head for ten or twelve hours per day as he would if he used the muscles for that period of time, he goes, nevertheless, unconsciously beyond his powers of strength. Unknown to him, the strain leaves its mark upon the mind. Youthful vigor throws its effects off for a while, but not permanently; and a man's early breakdown when he should be at the zenith of his powers in middle life is very often directly traceable to an overtaxing of his powers in early life. But not only is the effect of a future character; it is noticeable at the time of the indiscretion. It is seen in the inability of the mind to respond quickly to some suggestion at the office; and how can it be otherwise when the mind has been worked beyond its normal capacity? There is no question in my mind whatever that a young man is untrue to the interests of his employer when he allows himself to work during the evening hours. Although he may not be conscious of it himself, he does not come to his work the following morning as fresh as he might if the mind had been given a season of diversion and rest.
I know whereof I speak when I touch upon this subject. In common with other young men who are wiser than their best advisers, I made the mistake of evening work. For several years I gave up four or five evenings of each week to literary work. My family, my best friends, my physician, warned me to desist. But I knew better. Others, I conceded, undoubtedly had suffered from what I was doing, but I should not. I was strong, young, and of excellent physique. I could stand it; others could not; in fact, I was an exception to the rest of the human race. Two or three years went by, and I was proud of proving to my advisers that I was right and they were wrong. But suddenly, with scarce a warning, the blow came. Irritability and nervousness came first; everything annoyed me. The closing of a door, or the sudden entrance of a person into the room, caused me to start. The harder I worked the less I seemed to accomplish. I could not understand it. Then I began to lie