Play is usually regarded as something that is pure enjoyment and spontaneous. A recent cartoon pictured a boy complaining because his mother had asked him to carry a small rug up to the top of the house, then portrayed the same boy, after a ten-mile trudge, climbing a steep hill with a load of golf sticks, the perspiration streaming down his face, saying, "This is fine!"
The same task may therefore be regarded as work or play according to the point of view. The difference is the degree of enjoyment, the attitude or feeling toward the thing to be done.
We can control our attention, we can look for interesting things in almost any effort. In either work or play we require a rhythmic alternation between enjoyment and resolute endeavor.
The principles advocated in this book and its companion, "The Smile," should prepare a man for the work and the play of life. Exercises taken at any time should serve as a remedy for the evil effects of hard work of any kind.
The exercises give the best preparation for work and because many of them are taken lying down they do not exhaust but accumulate energy. They also stimulate and develop a harmony and activity of man's whole being.
The shortest and best answer that can be made to the question "How to work" is, to work rhythmically. This is the way Nature works. There is action and reaction.
The law of rhythm, which has already been explained, must be obeyed in our every-day tasks. It applies to every step we take.
One of the best results of these exercises is that they develop a sense of rhythm.
There are many violations of rhythm. One is continuing along one line too long. Work can be so arranged as to be varied. We can work at one thing several hours and then we can deliberately drop it until the next day and take up some other phase of work.
Without rhythm, work becomes drudgery. A more specific violation of rhythm is a failure to relax and to use force only when needed.