Unimportant Details.
We can neither regulate the complexity of our environment nor the number of problems which we must settle within a given time. But we can improve the conditions very much by avoiding overconcentration on unimportant details. The brain's best time and energy should be reserved for our own immediate problems; it should not be hampered by details of others.
The various officers of an industrial organization should know the ins and outs of the thinking machine on which they depend for guidance. With such knowledge each brain will give the greatest results, and without such knowledge the best brain may be untrustworthy.
One of the important characteristics of the mind is its tendency to lose sight of everything except the subject in mind. One danger is dodged by jumping into another which we have not seen. Both dangers were plainly in sight to any one who had not concentrated on one of them.
In the regular every-day business life, we seem to have ample time to consider each problem. But in reality our great length of time is offset by a great number of elements to consider, and a more profound effect of long continued teaching or molding of our environment.
For years engineers have concentrated energies on the steam-engine of the reciprocating type. The master-minds have made important improvements in the design, and many have given up their entire existence to the science of analyzing the effects of each variation in conditions of working the steam.
Our textbooks, our teaching, our observation all concentrated our attention on this type.
For some reason Gustav deLaval, followed by C.A. Parsons and Nikola Tesla, broke away from this spell, and we have the steam turbine engine. These individuals are endowed with master-minds, but the task of producing the turbines was probably no greater than the task of others in improving the reciprocating type.
In one case a great step has been taken. In the other, we have an example of men of undoubted ability laboring hard for entire lifetimes with relatively small gain.
This example applies to more than the inventors' world. It has many parallels in the cold business management of a manufactory and in any one of its departments. Business management requires the same kind of reasoning and getting away from the spell of environment. But this phase we shall consider later under another head.
The point to be brought out here is the effect of the spell of environment in magnifying the importance of existing views and methods, and the deceptive part this trusty brain plays in binding us to unnecessarily hard work.