Daily Learning Compounds Like Interest

“Having said that, I must now ask myself: what was it that gave me this self-confidence, this determination and adventurous spirit in business ... at 67? It was at least partly due to my discovery over a fairly long period, but more than ever during these latter years in Edinburgh and London, that experience was a very important element in the management side of business and it was, of course, the one thing that I had plenty of. I could go further and say that for management to be good it generally must be experienced. To be good at anything at all requires a lot of practice, and to be really good at taking decisions you have to have plenty of practice at taking decisions. The more one is exposed to the neces- sity of making decisions, the better one's decision- making becomes. my”

“I cannot explain this scientifically, but I was entirely convinced that, through the years, in my brain as in a computer, I had stored details of the problems them- selves, the decisions reached and the results obtained; everything was neatly filed away there for future use. Then, later, when a new problem arose, I would think it over and, if the answer was not immediately apparent, I would let it go for a while, and it was as if it went the rounds of the brain cells looking for guidance that could be retrieved, for by next morning, when I examined the problem again, more often than not the solution came up right away. That judgement seemed to be come to almost unconsciously, and my conviction is that during the time I was not consciously considering the problem, my sub- conscious had been turning it over and relating it to my memory ; it had been held up to the light of the experi- ences I had had in past years, and the way through the difficulties became obvious. I am pretty sure other older men have had this same evidence of the brain's sub- conscious work. This makes it all very easy, you may say. But, of course, it doesn't happen easily. That bank of experience from which I was able to draw in the later years was not easily funded. —”