Method in Work
There are people who seem to be always busy, and yet never seem to accomplish anything. They are capable, and really work hard, and yet they have little to show for all their work. Their failure is probably due to lack of method in their work. Method in work means a certain wise orderliness in doing the work. It is working according to some plan which experience has proved to be sound. It involves mapping out our time, taking things in their turn, finishing one job before we tackle another. As one writer well says: “The habit of method is essential to all who have much work to do, if they would get through it easily and with economy of time”. No really satisfactory work can be accomplished in a haphazard way. Lack of method spells worry, overwork, waste of time, inefficiency, and often failure.
For a student, method in study is very important. Lazy students, who take it easy in their work, and at college, get hopelessly behind with their work, and at last have to take to feverish cramming as the examination approaches. As a result of this lack of methodical work from the start, they generally fail. On the other hand, there are over-eager and impatient students, who want to run before they have learnt to walk. Instead of doing each day’s work thoroughly as it comes, they rush on to the more advanced parts of their subjects, only muddling their minds for their pains.
The wise student will content himself with thoroughly mastering each day’s work as it comes. A wise system of work is this: Prepare for the next day’s lectures the night before ; give your whole mind to the lectures in the class-room the following day ; the same evening, before you turn to the lectures to be given to-morrow, revise the work done in the classroom in the morning. In preparing for the next day’s lectures, you begin to drive the nail in; in the classroom the nail is driven home ; by your revision of the lectures the same evening, the nail is clinched. A student who works methodically in this way will master his subjects step by step. When the time for final preparation for the examination comes, his revision will consist simply of refreshing his memory about things already thoroughly learnt.
“A place for everything, and everything in its place”; and a time for every job, and every job at its right time: that is the method.
