City. I also have charge of the Economic and Social Book Department of the publishing
firm of Harper and Brothers. The insistent demands of these three tasks leave me no
time to fret and stew and run around in circles.
Second: I am a great dismisser. When I turn from one task to another, I dismiss all
thoughts of the problems I had been thinking about previously. I find it stimulating and
refreshing to turn from one activity to another. It rests me. It clears my mind.
Third: I have had to school myself to dismiss all these problems from my mind when I
close my office desk. They are always continuing. Each one always has a set of
unsolved problems demanding my attention. If I carried these issues home with me
each night, and worried about them, I would destroy my health; and, in addition, I would
destroy all ability to cope with them.
Ordway Tead is a master of the Four Good Working Habits. Do you remember what
they are?
If I Had Mot Stopped Worrying, I Would Have Been In My Grave Long Ago
By
Connie Mack
I have been in professional baseball for over sixty-three years. When I first started, back
in the eighties, I got no salary at all. We played on vacant lots, and stumbled over tin
cans and discarded horse collars. When the game was over, we passed the hat. The
pickings were pretty slim for me, especially since I was the main support of my widowed
mother and my younger brothers and sisters. Sometimes the ball team would have to
put on a strawberry supper or a clambake to keep going.
I have had plenty of reason to worry. I am the only baseball manager who ever finished
in last place for seven consecutive years. I am the only manager who ever lost eight
hundred games in eight years. After a series of defeats, I used to worry until I could
hardly eat or sleep. But I stopped worrying twenty-five years ago, and I honestly believe
that if I hadn't stopped worrying then, I would have been in my grave long ago.
As I looked back over my long life (I was born when Lincoln was President), I believe I
was able to conquer worry by doing these things:
1. I saw how futile it was. I saw it was getting me nowhere and was threatening to wreck
my career.
2. I saw it was going to ruin my health.
3. I kept myself so busy planning and working to win games in the future that I had no
time to worry over games that were already lost.
4. I finally made it a rule never to call a player's attention to his mistakes until twenty-four
hours after the game. In my early days, I used to dress and undress with the players. If
the team had lost, I found it impossible to refrain from criticising the players and from
arguing with them bitterly over their defeats. I found this only increased my worries.
Criticising a player in front of the others didn't make him want to co-operate. It really
made him bitter. So, since I couldn't be sure of controlling myself and my tongue
immediately after a defeat, I made it a rule never to see the players right after a defeat. I
wouldn't discuss the defeat with them until the next day. By that time, I had cooled off,