Keeping on Top of Your Work by Amos R. Wells

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 13, 1916

Keeping on Top of Your Work

By Amos R. Wells

I HAVE the quite undeserved reputation of keeping on top of my work. For many years I have enjoyed multitudinous and vastly diversified tasks, which I have accomplished, on the whole, with a fair degree of promptness. At all hazards I have kept my work troubles to myself; and when I have been buried the deepest beneath a mountain of pressing duties, I have maintained the smiling and nonchalant face of unfretted leisure. Thus I have fooled my little world, and made them believe I was always on top of my work.

I commend this artifice to all workers, because the air of cheerfulness strikes in on ourselves, renders the heart serene in time; while worry over work is a sure devastator of work. Napoleon’s unclouded confidence in his power to win victories often drove his foes in headlong flight.

For example, it is my practice, as soon as I reach my office and see the horrible accumulation on my desk,—letters, circulars, manuscripts, drawings, proofs, notices, books to review, exchanges, engravers’ bills to verify, and much besides,—to sweep them all summarily behind me. Some of the mass goes upon chairs, some of it on the floor, much of it into drawers. Not a scrap of it all remains on my desk. “What a wonderful desk!” my short-sighted visitors exclaim. “How do you ever manage to keep it so clean?” Then I reach around behind me, and pull out one job, only one, and set it before me: one proof, a few manuscripts, a little bundle of letters, nothing disheartening, and a big, fresh, empty desk to do it on.

My brothers of work! tasks yield buoyantly when assailed singly, but bear you to the earth if allowed to come at you in a battalion. One of the most valuable helps I have ever found for keeping on top of my work is this: Attack it in detail.

But of course there must be proportion and shrewd arrangement. I do not reach behind me at blank haphazard. Certain jobs come first, always. The circulars can wait. So, verily, can the engravers’ bills! The proofs cannot, for one thing, and they are laid first on the desk before me. A good rule for the dispatch of business is this: Attend first to matters that concern your coworkers.

One of my associate workers formerly was John Willis Baer, later president of Occidental College. I think I have gained something from every worker with whom I have ever been associated, and one of the valuable lessons he unconsciously taught me was this, always to be free for associate workers. However heavy the task on which he was engaged when I entered his office, and however trivial my errand, he turned to me with an eager readiness as if he had been waiting for me for a week. He never put me off to a less hurried season, he never kept me waiting; he dispatched me at once, and sent me on my way rejoicing. Of course, it is best to set a time for conferences with other workers, but in our office the head workers are migratory, off here and there attending conferences; they must be caught on the fly. This is the case in many other establishments. Since much of the fret of our work comes from the pressure of comrade workers, each appealing for attention lest his own work be retarded. By this rule, “Coworkers first!” is not only just, but prudent.

I owe something else to John Willis Baer: a big motto, in white letters on a black background, “DO IT NOW!” Well do I remember his delight when these mottoes came out. I have kept mine on my home desk ever since, and it preaches to me hourly. “Do the hard thing first,” it says. “Tackle now,” it says, “the task you dread.” “When that is out of the way,” it suggests, “the rest of your work will slide down greased ways.” And the motto is right, as I have discovered many times. It helps me gloriously as I try to keep on top of my work.

This article is a gossip about work rather than an ordered treatise, so that I

will set down next what is really the fundamental principle of the dispatch of business, Watch the minutes! I have written sixty books, and all of them in the fragments of my time, in the interstices between my regular tasks. Once I figured up the time I spend on the cars in the course of every year; it is a working month, twenty-four eight-hour days, one twelfth of my time. This is more time than any one can afford to idle away with a newspaper, and for it I always have an assigned task. I have read of a doctor who wrote a large and important book while waiting to be admitted after he had rung doorbells, and I believe the story. Time is the only gold, and he is rich indeed who hoards his minutes.

Plan Your Work, and Then Work Your Plan

Of course this means a schedule. Ben Franklin taught me the value of schedules, and I have one—a reasonably flexible one—for every hour and minute of the day. I can look ahead, and tell you, with considerable certainty, just what I shall be doing, if I remain an editor and author, at 6 A. M. ten years hence, or at 6 P. M.

A schedule is worthless without grit. Well up among the qualities of a successful worker is decisiveness. I am fond of the phrase, “Dispatch of business.” It is a great thing to know just how to spur a horse, or speed up an automobile engine. It is a greater thing to know how to drive your business, that you may keep it from driving you. Oliver Wendell Holmes had a little program of sentences that rolled a visitor down grade to the door so easily that he thought he was taking himself away. The same courteous briskness is to be applied to our tasks. “Here, you have been on my hands long enough. Good day. Come again soon.”

Another matter of prime importance, if you would keep on top of your work, is—to get on top! This remark is obvious in the making, but difficult in the execution. If, however, any worker finds himself depressed, his duties accumulating, his tasks too much for him, heroic measures are necessary. No more engagements. No more acceptance of additional work. One thing to live for: to clear the docket! No one can work well under the pressure of chronic delinquency. Get out from under! Get on top! Though it means a month or a year, get on top!

This being happily achieved, be insistent with yourself. Keep on top. I stay in my office every night till my work is done—every letter answered, usually every manuscript read, every proof passed, the coast cleared, the desk top ready for the morrow’s grist. I cannot sleep otherwise. Those unanswered letters and unread manuscripts would make my bed a mass of humps. I am generally through by five or half past, but my working day ends when my work ends. At least, this is my ideal; you might go back and reread my first paragraph.

Another help toward the dispatch of business which I have discovered is this: I keep work slips. A work slip is a bit of paper, about five inches by three, upon which I jot down, in the briefest fashion, all the work I do during the day. I keep these slips for years, though I never compare them, and no one else ever sees them; their value is in the making of them. For I like to fill up every slip. If, as the day wears on, I see my slip filling up slowly, the fact adds zeal to my spirit, and I knuckle down to my tasks with fresh energy. On hundreds of days this simple determination to fill in a creditable amount on my work slip makes the difference between a poor showing and a decent one. And the plan would be quite as good for a housewife as for an editor.

These work slips are of value in presenting a picture of one’s labor, so that, if one falls behind in quality or quantity of output, the cause of the deficiency may easily be discovered. It may be too many callers or too much time spent with each caller. It may be too much time devoted to some relatively unimportant element of the work. Whatever it is, the worker must sternly correct it, since his work, like a chain, is no stronger than its weakest link.

Do a Little Every Day

One of my work mottoes is this: “Do a little every day.” However difficult the task, it will yield to daily attacks. Ten minutes a day is the open sesame to all doors. It will read the longest book—and write it, for that matter. It will paint a house, it will clean it and keep it clean; it will master a language or a science. An hour a week will not do it, but ten minutes a day will. That is as long a time, on the average, as almost-blind Prescott had for eyesight work on his immortal histories. Let no one think his noblest task impossible if he can devote to it ten minutes a day.

“The morning hour has gold in its mouth.” Nearly all great workers rise early, which means, of necessity, that they go to bed early. They milk the freshness of the day, its quiet, its freedom from interruption, and the freshness of their own physical and mental powers. The result is rich cream of achievement.

The best workers are the best players. There is no permanent creation without re-creation. Springs, and not pitchers, make rivers. Too much play, of course, destroys work, as too much rain destroys the river; but too little play dries the work up. I should write: “Play wisely” on one wall of the workers’ room; “But play,” “But play,” “But play,” I should write on the other three walls.

Which means, of course, “Don’t work too much.” This is the motto most needed by American workers. I once visited an enormous printing plant and was told that the presses were kept busy at full speed day and night, with all the added cost of night wages, in order that they might be worn out as quickly as possible, and be replaced by new presses, with all the latest improvements. That might be good policy for presses; but when the human machine is worn out, where can we get another? Learn to say, No! To the true worker the temptation to take on new tasks is as alluring as the offer of whisky to a drunkard. Learn to say, No!

And I will close these rambling remarks with the motto of a friend of mine, a man whose diversity of interests far exceeds my own, and whose earnest and fruitful activities extend over two hemispheres. “When tired, go to bed!” says he. Not seldom he disappears from the office and takes a vacation—in bed. He is not sick, not at all, and he does not intend to be. He has learned the value of complete relaxation. He has discovered that thirty-two consecutive hours in bed are worth, many times over, four eight-hour periods in bed. He does not sleep all those thirty-two hours, but also he does not read or write or talk or worry. He simply lets himself go. He simply rests. He simply falls back on the bosom of the earth, and from that contact, like the giant of old, he rises with tenfold strength and endurance.

Have I given you too many work mottoes? Well, here they are, for your choice. My only urging is, Take, not what you like, but what you need!—Amos R. Wells, in the Sunday School Times.