The Screen As It Came

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. I am told that in your century a rented program arrives already decided, with a screen of figures a stranger chose, and that most men never alter a line of it.

Two locksmiths in your own century, the same van and the same two counties.
Both bought the same program in the same February, and both learned it properly.
One took the screen as it came, and worked to the figures standing on it.
The other spent half an hour changing which three figures it showed, then worked to those.
By December one had done a third more jobs than the other.
The other had the better year. Which, and why?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two locksmiths, in a town much like the one I have never named, though set in your century rather than mine. Each worked out of a van, and each in the same February grew tired of writing jobs on the back of his hand. They bought the same program, and it was a good one.

The first opened it on the Monday and found it ready for him. Across the top stood four figures, large and clear. Jobs completed this week. Calls answered. Average minutes to reply. Jobs completed this year, with a small green arrow pointing upward. He did not choose them, nor object to them. They were what the thing showed, and he saw them eleven times a day.

Nobody ever resolved to chase them. He came to prefer the arrow pointing up, that was all. By April he had noticed, without quite thinking it, that a lock change in a terrace took forty minutes and counted as one job, while a shopfront with three doors took most of a day and also counted as one. He began saying yes faster to the terrace and slower to the shopfront, and answered within four minutes at half past nine at night, because the minutes were on the screen. He finished the year with eleven hundred and forty jobs, a third more than he had ever done, and less money at Christmas than the year before.

The second opened it on the Monday and did one thing first. He sat in the van outside a job in the rain with a pencil, and asked what he would want to know on a Friday if he could know only three things. Not what was interesting. What he would act on. Money collected against money owed. Jobs quoted and not yet answered. Jobs from householders he had worked for before. He put those three across the top, and the job count two taps away. That was the whole of the difference between the two men.

What it did was neither dramatic nor quick. In the second week the owed figure stood at four thousand two hundred, which he had not known, and because it sat before him on the Friday he spent twenty minutes telephoning about it. In June the quoted and unanswered figure sat at nine for a fortnight, which told him he had been pricing shopfronts and saying nothing afterwards, so he began ringing on the fourth day. The third was the slow one, and taught him over five months that the midnight work, which counted splendidly, almost never brought a man back.

He did eight hundred and sixty jobs, and had much the better year.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The figures a machine puts in front of you become the figures you work to, whether you ever chose them or not. The choosing was done by somebody who has never seen your books, and he did not do it carelessly. He did it for everybody at once, which is worse.

Consider his position fairly. He sells the same window to a locksmith, a dentist and a woman who grooms dogs, and must fill the top of it before he knows anything about any of them. Only counts and speeds mean the same in all three trades, since money would require knowing what your van and your hour are worth. So he shows you the tally: the largest set of figures true in every trade, the set with the least of your business in it. And a program can always prove that it is busy, so the tally flatters the rent as much as it informs you, which is why applause is not appetite.

Now the part that does the damage. A figure you look at once a year is information. A figure you look at eleven times a day is an instruction. Nothing is decided, and yet within a quarter you are arranging your work so the number behaves. That is no weakness in him, but what any man does when a thing stands before him daily and faintly rewards him. And the easiest way to raise a count is to make the things counted smaller, so a tally of jobs recruits you against the large work, where your money has always been.

Three figures is the right number, and of three kinds. One of money, so a busy year cannot pretend to be a good one. One of work stuck waiting, the quotes unanswered or the bills unpaid, that being the cheapest money in any trade and invisible unless counted. One of repetition, the customers coming back, which alone tells you what sort of work builds a business rather than merely fills a week. You measure in order to decide, not in order to know, and the till has no opinions.

Two cautions. A figure you cannot see without arithmetic is not a figure you have, and a machine that cannot show one of your three standing up has told you something about itself. The second is that your own three can be worse than the maker's. A figure you are able to flatter will be flattered, and a man who puts quotes given on his wall will find himself quoting cheerfully and winning nothing. Pick figures that can embarrass you, and leave them alone for a season. A measure changed every month is a mirror rather than a measure.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What does my screen show me first? Write the figures down in the order they appear. Those are your present priorities, whoever set them.
2. Which of these could rise all year without a shilling arriving? Any figure that can is one to move off the front page.
3. Where do I look up the figure I steer by? If the answer is a sum in a notebook when you remember, you do not steer by it.

The Answer to the Riddle

One took the screen as it came and one spent half an hour changing which three figures it showed. By December one had done a third more jobs, and the other had the better year. Which, and why?

The second. The first worked all year to a count of jobs, because a count of jobs was what stood before him every hour, and a count rises fastest when the work is small, so his year filled with forty minute calls and his money did not follow. The other put money owed, work waiting and customers returning where his eye fell, and acted on them weekly.

The verse:

The screen came set by strangers for a hundred other trades,
And what they chose to show you is the thing you came to mind.
A count will climb the whole year through and leave the ledger thin,
So set the three that pay you where your eye is bound to find.

Until next time. Go and open the program you use most, and put in place of the first three figures it shows you one figure of money, one of work stuck waiting, and one of customers coming back.

P.S. The same law governs what the machine sends you unasked. A program that pushes a message to your telephone has chosen which events deserve to interrupt a job, and it chooses the ones that prove it is working. Turn off every notice you would not stop drilling a door to read.

Also in the archive: The Fortnight in Pencil, Eleven Small Wages and What You May Spend.