Question No. 3 -Here is what I am going to do about it.
Question No. 4 -When am I going to start doing it?
~~~
Chapter 5 - How to Eliminate Fifty Per Cent of Tour Business Worries
IF you are a business man, you are probably saying to yourself right now: "The title of
this chapter is ridiculous. I have been running my business for nineteen years; and I
certainly know the answers if anybody does. The idea of anybody trying to tell me how I
can eliminate fifty per cent of my business worries-it's absurd I"
Fair enough-I would have felt exactly the same way myself a few years ago if I had seen
this title on a chapter. It promises a lot-and promises are cheap.
Let's be very frank about it: maybe I won't be able to help you eliminate fifty per cent of
your business worries. In the last analysis, no one can do that, except yourself. But what
I can do is to show you how other people have done it-and leave the rest to you!
You may recall that on page 25 of this book I quoted the world-famous Dr. Alexis Carrel
as saying: "Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young."
Since worry is that serious, wouldn't you be satisfied if I could help you eliminate even
ten per cent of your worries? ... Yes? ... Good! Well, I am going to show you how one
business executive eliminated not fifty per cent of his worries, but seventy-five per cent
of all the time he formerly spent in conferences, trying to solve business problems.
Furthermore, I am not going to tell you this story about a "Mr. Jones" or a "Mr. X" or "or
a man I know in Ohio"- vague stories that you can't check up on. It concerns a very real
person-Leon Shimkin, a partner and general manager of one of the foremost publishing
houses in the United States: Simon and Schuster, Rockefeller Centre, New York 20,
New York.
Here is Leon Shimkin's experience in his own words:
"For fifteen years I spent almost half of every business day holding conferences,
discussing problems. Should we do this or that-do nothing at all? We would get tense;
twist in our chairs; walk the floor; argue and go around in circles. When night came, I
would be utterly exhausted. I fully expected to go on doing this sort of thing for the rest
of my life. I had been doing it for fifteen years, and it never occurred to me that there
was a better way of doing it. If anyone had told me that I could eliminate three-fourths of
all the time I spent in those worried conferences, and three-fourths of my nervous strain-
I would have thought he was a wild-eyed, slap-happy, armchair optimist. Yet I devised a
plan that did just that. I have been using this plan for eight years. It has performed
wonders for my efficiency, my health, and my happiness.
"It sounds like magic-but like all magic tricks, it is extremely simple when you see how it
is done.