Twenty-Two by Christmas

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town a man looked at his bench on New Year's morning and said what he hoped for, and by Twelfth Night had generally forgotten it.

Two coachbuilders in the town I have never named, the same seasoned ash and the same two men at the bench.
Both were asked at the New Year what they wanted of the year, and both answered that they wanted a good one.
One left it there and took the work as it came to the door.
One went home and wrote four lines on a card, and read them before he answered any letter.
By Christmas both were tired, and only one of them was further on than he had been in January.
Same ash, same bench, same work offered at both doors. What was on the card?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Both were good coachbuilders, which is four trades in one shop. The ash is steamed and bent for the frame, the elm panels fitted, the iron tyre set on hot so that it grips as it cools, and then the paint shop: eleven coats, each rubbed down and wanting its own dry days. A carriage is three weeks of work and a deal of waiting that cannot be hurried. Repair work is the opposite in every particular: a shaft spliced, the money in your hand by Saturday, and the paint shop taken up, which is the neck every new carriage must pass through.

The first coachbuilder took whatever came to the door and was never once idle. In March a carrier brought nine carts wanting new floors, and he took them, nine carts in March being a comfortable thing to have. In June a gentleman asked for a light gig, was told eight weeks, and went elsewhere, which he thought a pity. At Christmas he counted eleven new vehicles, a great many repairs, and within a few pounds of the year before. He could not have said why it was the same, having never said what it was to be.

The second coachbuilder spent twenty minutes on the second of January. He wrote four lines on a card and stood it against the inkstand where he opened his letters. Twenty-two new vehicles finished by Christmas. None under eighteen pounds. No repair work after Lady Day, excepting for men who had bought a carriage from him. Counted on the first Monday of every month, in ink.

The card did not make him work faster. What it did was answer things. The carrier came to him too and was refused in a sentence, because March was when the paint shop had to be clear for the spring orders. In February he took on a lad, having put it off two years, because twenty-two could not be done by two men. On the first Monday in June he counted nine finished, saw he was four behind the pace, and spent a wet Tuesday writing to eleven farmers about spring vans. Three wrote back.

He finished with twenty. He missed his figure by two.

But he knew in June that he was behind, with five months left to do something about it, and by Christmas he knew that eighteen pounds had been set a shade high for his district. The first coachbuilder knew only that he was tired, and supposed he would do the same again.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A figure written down before the year begins is not a spur to work harder, it is a rule that answers half your questions for you, and most of its value lies in the work it tells you to refuse. The larger claims made for such a card do not hold. This one does, and it is enough.

Consider the man with no figure. Every enquiry must be argued from the beginning. Is this work worth having. It is work, and work is generally worth having, so he takes it, and is right every time and wrong over the year.

A figure makes no man wiser about any one job. It makes him consistent across all of them, which is rarer. The question changes shape: not is this worth having, but does this carry me toward the twenty-two. A closed question is answered in a minute by a tired man at the end of the day, and answered the same way on Tuesday as on Friday. That is the mechanism, and it is why naming the work you will not take brings fewer enquiries and more money.

Now the part usually got wrong. The figure must be counted in work you perform, not money you hope for. You do not govern what a district spends. You govern how many carriages you begin and how many letters you write. A card saying four hundred pounds carries a wish. A card saying twenty-two is set beside nine in June, and then a man knows what Tuesday is for.

It needs a named day for the counting, since a figure governs your choosing only when you are reminded of it. Keep the card where the letters are opened, and the count in ink on the first Monday, set against the only figures that can instruct you, which are your own.

Two cautions. A figure set out of ambition rather than arithmetic is abandoned quietly in April, and the abandoning teaches you to distrust the next one, so set it where you would take an even bet: a little beyond last year, near enough that missing it would surprise you. And a rule is a servant. Some work will not fit the card and ought plainly to be taken, and refusing good trade to protect a number you invented in January is the thing upside down. Write the exception on the card at the start, as the second man did with his old customers. One named in advance stays single. One invented in the moment breeds.

None of this makes trade appear where there is none. A card cannot bend ash, and anybody who tells you a written figure draws work to the door is selling you something. Its power runs over your own choosing, which is the part of the year you hold.

Three questions, to be answered before you go to bed tonight:

1. What is my figure, counted in things I do? Jobs finished, customers served, letters sent. If the answer is a sum of money, divide it by what you charge, and that sum is your figure.
2. Where will it be when I am deciding? Not in your head, which rearranges itself to suit the afternoon, but in front of you, where enquiries are answered and prices written. A figure out of sight has no vote in the decision it was written for.
3. What does it tell me to refuse this week? If the honest answer is nothing, it is set too low or written too loosely. A figure earns its place by the first good-looking job it makes you turn away.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same ash, same bench, same work offered at both doors. What was on the card?

Four lines. How many he meant to build, the least he would build one for, the date after which he would take no more interruptions, and the day he would count. He ended two short of his own figure, and well ahead of the man who had no figure to be short of, and who could not say in December what had happened to him.

The verse:

Both men wished the year a good one, standing at the bench,
But one of them went home and wrote down what a good one was.
The card could neither bend the ash nor bring the gentry in,
It only said, when Tuesday came, which work to take and leave.

Until next time. Go and write one figure and one date on a card, counted in work you can do, and stand it where you answer your letters.

P.S. Write beside the figure the one thing you intend to stop doing to reach it. A year has no spare room, and a figure arriving without a subtraction is the old year with a hope on top.

Also in the archive: The Hour Nobody Claimed, The Last Thursday in September and The Chalk Behind the Door.