It is a most helpful practice to attempt to
express in words just what one is trying to
accomplish; what are the conditions necessary
for success; what the conditions that are lower-
<p 302>
ing efficiency; and what are the possibilities of
the work, etc. The method of analysis and
expression assists wonderfully in abstracting
the aspects of one's experience necessary for
the generalization, abstraction, and principle
used in reflective judgments.
_Special Conditions Favorable to the Formation
of Expert judgments_
There are no clearly defined special conditions
for increasing one's capacity to apply expert
judgments. The general conditions discussed
on page 278@@@ seem to cover the case. If I have
provided, as an executive, for all these conditions
for developing expert judgments:--
(1) if I have good vigorous health,
(2) if I am working with enthusiastic application,
(3) if I have the right attitude towards my
work,
(4) and finally, if I am having frequent
experience in making practical and theoretical
judgments,--I am then fulfilling the conditions
most favorable for the development of expert
judgments.
CHAPTER XIII
CAPITALIZING EXPERIENCE--HABIT FORMATION
AFTER spending four years in an Eastern
college, a young graduate was put in
charge of a group of day laborers. He
assumed toward them the attitude of the athletic
director and the coach combined. He set
out to develop a winning team, one that could
handle more cubic yards of dirt in a day than
any other group on the job.
He had no guidebook and no official records
to direct him. He did not know what the
best ``form'' was for shoveling dirt, and he
did not know how much a good man could
accomplish in an hour. With stop watch
and notebook in hand, he began to observe
the movements of the man who seemed the
best worker in the group. He counted the
different movements made in handling a
<p 303>
<p 304>
shovelful of dirt, and the exact time required
for each of the movements. He then made similar
observations upon other men. He found
that the best man was making fewer movements
and faster movements than his companions.
But he also discovered that even
this best workman was making movements
which were not necessary, and that he was
making some movements too slowly and thus
losing the advantage of the momentum which a
higher speed would have produced, and which
would have enabled him to accomplish the task
with less effort.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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