Self-Help
Self-improvement — Smiles's 1859 casebook of inventors, potters, artists and engineers who made their own way, told as short working biographies.
Mechanisms
Break three dozen pots into test tiles
Palissy could not afford to fire whole pieces for every guess at the white enamel.
"He began by breaking three dozen new earthen pots, the pieces of which he covered with different materials which he had compounded, and then took them to a neighbouring glass-furnace to be baked."
Why it matters
Palissy could not afford to fire whole pieces for every guess at the white enamel. Shards let him test many compounds in one firing, and the hotter glass furnace gave him "a glimmer of hope."
Use when: Each full test of an idea is expensive and you are testing one variable at a time.
Notice what turns white in the fire
Wedgwood studied chemistry in his spare hours and caught one small change in color.
"he noticed that a certain earth containing silica, which was black before calcination, became white after exposure to the heat of a furnace."
Why it matters
Wedgwood studied chemistry in his spare hours and caught one small change in color. Mixing silica into the local red clay gave him the white body behind English earthenware.
Use when: You keep seeing a small anomaly in your materials and haven't asked what it would let you make.
Learn the hand craft before you build the machine
Heathcoat mastered the motions himself before trying to mechanize them.
"He first studied the art of making the Buckingham or pillow-lace by hand, with the object of effecting the same motions by mechanical means."
Why it matters
Heathcoat mastered the motions himself before trying to mechanize them. His master called him "undaunted by failures and mistakes," and the result was the bobbin-net machine.
Use when: You are automating a process you have never done by hand.
The spider's net, the lobster shell, the shipworm
Three engineers, three borrowed designs: Brown's suspension bridge from a web, Watt's jointed river pipe from a lobster shell, Brunel's tunneling shield from a boring worm.
"he saw a tiny spider's net suspended across his path. The idea immediately occurred to him, that a bridge of iron ropes or chains might be constructed in like manner" "Sir Isambert Brunel took his first lessons in forming the Thames Tunnel from the tiny shipworm"
Why it matters
Three engineers, three borrowed designs: Brown's suspension bridge from a web, Watt's jointed river pipe from a lobster shell, Brunel's tunneling shield from a boring worm. Each was already studying the problem when he saw the model.
Use when: You are designing a structure and haven't asked what in nature already solves it.
Keep the subject before you until it dawns
Asked how he made his discoveries, Newton said "By always thinking unto them." His rest was switching subjects, which kept the main problem in view without forcing it.
"'I keep the subject continually before me, and wait till the first dawnings open slowly by little and little into a full and clear light.'"
Why it matters
Asked how he made his discoveries, Newton said "By always thinking unto them." His rest was switching subjects, which kept the main problem in view without forcing it.
Use when: A hard problem needs sustained attention and you keep starting fresh on it each week.
Make him repeat the sermon at lunch
Smiles calls Peel's natural powers "mediocre." The weekly drill built the recall he later used to answer opponents point by point in Parliament.
"his father was accustomed to set him up at table to practise speaking extempore; and he early accustomed him to repeat as much of the Sunday's sermon as he could remember."
Why it matters
Smiles calls Peel's natural powers "mediocre." The weekly drill built the recall he later used to answer opponents point by point in Parliament.
Use when: You want to build a skill like recall or quick replies and are waiting for talent to show up.
Pay someone a crown to drag you out of bed
Willpower alone failed.
"He then called his servant, Joseph, to his help, and promised him the reward of a crown every time that he succeeded in getting him up before six." "he was accustomed to say that he owed to Joseph three or four volumes of his Natural History."
Why it matters
Willpower alone failed. Buffon paid for each success, and Joseph earned his pay by ignoring protests and threats, once with a basin of ice water. The precommitment worked where resolutions hadn't.
Use when: You keep breaking a resolution you've made to yourself many times.
Pack the box, one thing at once
Cecil never left a task half done to return to later.
"'Method,' said the Reverend Richard Cecil, 'is like packing things in a box; a good packer will get in half as much again as a bad one.'" "'The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once;'"
Why it matters
Cecil never left a task half done to return to later. De Witt's version was "One thing at a time": think of nothing else until the current dispatch is finished.
Use when: You have ten things open and none of them is getting done.
When the front stalls, the rear piles up
Walter Scott's advice to a young clerk names the problem as dawdling and the cost as a backlog where "affairs begin to press all at once." Clearing the first item keeps everything behind it moving.
"Do instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of recreation after business, never before it. When a regiment is under march, the rear is often thrown into confusion because the front do not move steadily and without interruption."
Why it matters
Walter Scott's advice to a young clerk names the problem as dawdling and the cost as a backlog where "affairs begin to press all at once." Clearing the first item keeps everything behind it moving.
Use when: Small tasks are stacking up behind one you keep putting off.
Ask for a book of blots
John Hunter wanted surgeons to publish failures as well as successes, and Watt asked for "a book of blots." Davy said his most important discoveries came from failures.
"John Hunter used to remark that the art of surgery would not advance until professional men had the courage to publish their failures as well as their successes." "Watt the engineer said, of all things most wanted in mechanical engineering was a history of failures: 'We want,' he said, 'a book of blots.'" "I thank God I was not made a dexterous manipulator, for the most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by failures."
Why it matters
John Hunter wanted surgeons to publish failures as well as successes, and Watt asked for "a book of blots." Davy said his most important discoveries came from failures.
Use when: Your team writes up wins and quietly forgets what didn't work.
The ifs and the buts are out of season
From a small chateau in Poland, Napoleon chased muskets, shirts, sabres and biscuit by letter.
"'The ifs and the buts,' said he, 'are at present out of season, and above all it must be done with speed.'" "To Massena he writes, 'Let me know if your biscuit and bread arrangements are yet completed.'"
Why it matters
From a small chateau in Poland, Napoleon chased muskets, shirts, sabres and biscuit by letter. Smiles says he chose agents well and still checked the details where results depended on them.
Use when: A big operation depends on supplies you've delegated and never verified.
Pay your own bills
Wellington's servant had speculated with the money and left the bills unpaid.
"'I make a point,' said he to Mr. Gleig, 'of paying my own bills, and I advise every one to do the same; formerly I used to trust a confidential servant to pay them, but I was cured of that folly by receiving one morning, to my great surprise, duns of a year or two's standing."
Why it matters
Wellington's servant had speculated with the money and left the bills unpaid. Keeping "an accurate detailed account of all the moneys received and expended" was the fix.
Use when: Someone else handles your money and you haven't looked at the accounts in months.
Set down sudden thoughts for use
Bacon, Eldon, Pye Smith and John Hunter all kept running notes, and the habit gave them stock to draw on later.
"Lord Bacon left behind him many manuscripts entitled 'Sudden thoughts set down for use.'" "These note-books afterwards proved, like Richter's 'quarries,' the great storehouse from which he drew his illustrations."
Why it matters
Bacon, Eldon, Pye Smith and John Hunter all kept running notes, and the habit gave them stock to draw on later. Pye Smith's biographer called him "always at work, always in advance, always accumulating."
Use when: Good ideas show up when you aren't working and are gone by the time you are.
Arguments
Too much fame too early
This is Smiles's verdict on Benjamin West, a child prodigy.
"West might have been a greater painter, had he not been injured by too early success: his fame, though great, was not purchased by study, trials, and difficulties, and it has not been enduring."
Why it matters
This is Smiles's verdict on Benjamin West, a child prodigy. He makes the same point about Rossini through Beethoven: facility that comes too easily can stop the hard practice.
Use when: Early praise is arriving faster than your skill is growing.
Concepts
Drop the product before you cheapen it
Wedgwood made the line explicit: when quality couldn't be held, the article stopped.
"He aimed throughout at the highest excellence, declaring his determination 'to give over manufacturing any article, whatsoever it might be, rather than to degrade it.'"
Why it matters
Wedgwood made the line explicit: when quality couldn't be held, the article stopped. Smiles credits the standard with lifting the whole Staffordshire district.
Use when: Margins are squeezed and the easy fix is a cheaper version under the same name.
Evidence
Watch your daughters comb their hair
Heilmann had a professionally built model and still couldn't make it work.
"he found himself almost unconsciously watching his daughters coming their long hair and drawing it out at full length between their fingers." "if he could successfully imitate in a machine the process of combing out the longest hair and forcing back the short by reversing the action of the comb, it might serve to extricate him from his difficulty."
Why it matters
Heilmann had a professionally built model and still couldn't make it work. The answer came from an ordinary motion at home, which he copied into the combing machine. ("coming" is the Gutenberg text's misprint for "combing".)
Use when: You've been stuck on a mechanism for months and have only looked at other machines.
Rats ate the drawings, so draw better ones
Audubon lost two hundred original drawings.
"a pair of Norway rats had taken possession of the whole, and reared a young family among the gnawed bits of paper" "I felt pleased that I might now make better drawings than before; and, ere a period not exceeding three years had elapsed, my portfolio was again filled." "He had no draft, and was compelled to rake up from his memory facts, ideas, and expressions, which had been long since dismissed."
Why it matters
Audubon lost two hundred original drawings. In his own account he was flattened for days, then treated the redo as a chance to improve, and refilled the portfolio in under three years. Smiles pairs it with Carlyle, whose lent manuscript of the first French Revolution volume was burned as waste paper and rewritten from memory.
Use when: Months of work are gone and you can't face starting again.
Four years dinning the project into ears
After a failed first voyage the Admiralty refused Phipps another ship.
"At first he was laughed at; but his ceaseless importunity at length prevailed, and after four years' dinning of his project into the ears of the great and influential—during which time he lived in poverty—he at length succeeded." "a diver came up with a solid bar of silver in his arms."
Why it matters
After a failed first voyage the Admiralty refused Phipps another ship. He raised the money privately through a twenty-share company and found the Spanish wreck when a sailor sent a diver after a sea plant.
Use when: Your first attempt failed in public and the original backer won't fund a second.
Brushes from the cat's tail
Smiles lists a run of first instruments: Wilkie's burnt stick, Ferguson's bead-and-thread star map, Franklin's silk kite, Rittenhouse's plough handle.
"Benjamin West made his first brushes out of the cat's tail." "Watt made his first model of the condensing steam-engine out of an old anatomist's syringe"
Why it matters
Smiles lists a run of first instruments: Wilkie's burnt stick, Ferguson's bead-and-thread star map, Franklin's silk kite, Rittenhouse's plough handle. None waited for proper tools.
Use when: You're holding off on starting until you have the right equipment.
Passages
Trifles make perfection
The visitor saw no change; Michelangelo listed six.
"'I have retouched this part—polished that—softened this feature—brought out that muscle—given some expression to this lip, and more energy to that limb.' 'But these are trifles,' remarked the visitor. 'It may be so,' replied the sculptor, 'but recollect that trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.'"
Why it matters
The visitor saw no change; Michelangelo listed six. Smiles pairs it with Poussin's answer on his reputation: "Because I have neglected nothing."
Use when: Someone asks why the last 5 per cent is taking so long.