Make good! Don’t explain! Do the thing you are expected to do! Don’t
waste time in giving reasons why you didn’t, or couldn’t, or wouldn’t,
or shouldn’t!
If I hire you to cook for me I expect my chops and baked potatoes on
time, done to a turn and appetizing; I am not interested in the
butcher’s mistake, nor the stove’s defect, nor in the misery in your
left arm. I want food, not explanations. You can’t eat explanations.
If I hire you to take care of my automobile, or factory, or shirtwaist
counter, I do not want to hear why things are half-done; I want results.
So also if you come to me and hire me to do a job of writing by the
fifteenth of the month, you do not want me to show up on that day with a
moving-picture story describing how I couldn’t do what I was paid for.
You want the writing, and you want it first class, all wool and a yard
wide.
This is cold, cruel, heartless talk. It is—to all second-raters and
shirkers. But to real men it is a joy and gladness. They rejoice to make
good themselves, they expect others to make good, and they like to hear
preached the gospel of making good.
Mr. Yust, the Rochester librarian, in his report some time ago, spoke of
the Parable of the Talents, in which we are told of the “three servants
who had received talents, five, two and one, respectively. On the
Master’s return they all rendered account of their stewardship. The
first two had doubled their capital. Each of them said so in fourteen
words, and their work was pronounced, ‘Well done, good and faithful
servant.’ Servant number three had accomplished absolutely nothing, but
he made a full report in forty-two words, three times as long as the
other reports.”
There you have it. The less you do the more you explain.