One of the busiest and most efficient men in England is quoted as having explained his own accomplishment of big results with the least expenditure of effort:  “By organizing myself to run smoothly, as well as my business; by schooling myself to keep cool, and to do what I have to do without expending more nervous energy on the task than is necessary; by avoiding all needless friction.  In consequence, when I finish my day’s work, I feel nearly as fresh as when I started.”

[Sidenote:  Why a Man Breaks Down]

The late Professor James, of Harvard University, often referred to as the founder of modern psychology, spoke thus disparagingly of untrained effort:  “Your convulsive worker breaks down and has bad moods so often that you never know where he may be when you most need his help,—­he may be having one of his ‘bad days.’  We say that so many of our fellow-countrymen collapse and have to be sent abroad to rest their nerves, because they work so hard.  I suspect that this is an immense mistake, I suspect that neither the nature nor the amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and the severity of our breakdowns, but that their cause lies rather in those absurd feelings of hurry and having no time, in the breathlessness and tension, that anxiety of feature and solicitude for results, that lack of inner harmony and ease, in short, by which with us the work is apt to be accompanied.”

[Sidenote:  How to Economize Effort]

The fact is that to be a truly busy man you must be never in a hurry.  You must work systematically.  You must economize effort.  You must permit no distractions and do your work leisurely.  You must take time to think things over in a natural way.  You must waste no thoughts in business hours on social or pleasurable pursuits that would dissipate your mental capital.  You must work when you work, and you may play when you play, but your business must be the most fascinating of games and the only one you play during business hours.

[Sidenote:  How Your Mental Capital is Dissipated]

Another thing you need is poise.  One trouble with you now is that you waste your priceless powers in useless anxiety.

The minute business falls off you begin to worry.  You fritter your mental energies in fretting until you are incapable of real thought, and being unable to think your way out you get excited.

Remember it is all just a game, and you are in it only for the fun of the thing.  You will never win out if you persist in tearing your hair.

Before he crossed the Rubicon Julius Caesar was staggered at the greatness of the undertaking before him.  The more he reflected and took counsel of his friends, the greater loomed the difficulties of the attempt and the more appalling the calamities his passage of that river would bring upon the Roman world.  But when at last with the cry, “The die is cast!” he plunged into the river, there was an end for him to mental dissension, a freedom to plan and execute, an expansion of courage and power.