The systematic office man (and woman) is like any other flesh and blood success; he is not born with his equipment full-fledged and ready-made; he either makes it himself, or has it made for him. In the latter case, he gets hiss system from a fatherly department head, who takes him under his wing, and schools and coaches him in systematic precepts until "the pupil learns by rote the methods of the master." But most systematic men-and the best of them- make themselves-and the system in these men is real, enduring and ingrained. The self-made system man invents his own system and invents it because he finds it necessary.

He has to discover a way to keep ahead of the other fellow and in devising such a way, he cultivates not only system, but his initiative and originality. The self-made system man accepts and uses system early in his career, because he discovers that it is the easiest way "to get the thing done."

He finds that orderliness, promptness and a positive hatred of the excuse, "I forgot," are just as necessary as hard work; that the clever lazy man may outclass the most conscientious plodder who does not pause to plan; in fact that the hardest task can be made the easiest if he applies a little system and ingenuity to it. The systematic habit starts with system in the little things.

The general manager with the seemingly exhaustless capacity for detail may have started as the clever order clerk, who found that he could make out three times as many orders in a day, by using a triplicate order system instead of copying each order over three times. Again, perhaps he began as the ambitious correspondent who used the "form paragraph" system and by judicious use of these forms, answered twice as many letters as the higher salaried correspondent who dictated every letter in full. Or he may even have commenced as the office boy who made short cuts in his desk cleaning, or in his keeping of office supplies, so he could ask for something else to keep him busy.

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Rule 1: Don't let go of a single paper, a letter or a duty of any kind entrusted to your care for execution, until you have made a "tickler" memo of it, so you can follow it up to the end and know what becomes of it.

Rule 2: Interview your tickler every morning. Make it the first "office assistant" you see and consult at every day's beginning. Then plan your day's work, in accordance with what the tickler tells you to do on that day.

Rule 3: After the tickler has been consulted, and you have clearly fixed in your mind the important things that must be done today, the new papers coming over your desk next deserve attention.

Rule 4: Whatever unfinished work you have left over at night, should always be left in the upper right hand drawer of your desk. This does not mean part of your unfinished work-and the rest of it scattered through fifty-seven different pigeon-holes and compartments. It means all of it; the first rule of system is to have one definite, unvarying place for each kind of work. If by any chance you can't get it all in that drawer, see that a memo is placed in the drawer, showing where the overflow can be found.

Rule 5: Men who make and break promises are not always men who are intentionally dishonest. Sometimes they are simply good natured, and dislike to say "No" when asked to accomplish a given task. Yet there is no worker who causes more trouble for others, and more unhappiness for himself, than the man who continually makes loose agreements, without first carefully calculating their feasibility. To break this habit should be the foremost purpose of the system man. Let him resolve to make no agreement, either spoken or written, as to the delivery or shipment of goods, the completion of a task, the accomplishment of any business contract, until he has fully investigated all the conditions and knows to a certainty that his promise can be easily and promptly fulfilled-that it will be so fulfilled.

More tips on how to organize your day's work

Let us begin this system-installation then, with a first-class house cleaning. Let us sweep out the old order before we put in the new one. We will begin with the lower deep drawer, for that is the drawer foremost in ''dusty uncertainties.'' Have you had any use for those dog-eared paper bundles piled knee high in its "bottomless depths?" Suppose you had to locate instantly, the contract you placed in this drawer a week ago, could you put your hand down into the unclassified junk heap and immediately extract the desired document? And take the drawer on the opposite side,-how many times have you had occasion to consult a single one of the countless catalogs and price-lists you have tossed into it carelessly and thoughtlessly day after day during the past year? Once? Twice? Then clear them out and put them somewhere else.

Get a special file for them if necessary, but don't let matters which you will refer to, at best, but once a month, interfere with data you must consult perhaps once a day. Now then, with a clean desk at the start, the problem is to keep it clean-to make it as orderly as a puritanical copy book, with a place and a system for taking care of every kind of material that comes within the desk domain. For we want no back-sliding desks, no relapses to the old disordered order. No signing the system pledge only to break it when the test of rush work comes.

The first great law of system is classification-a right place for the right thing. Classification is almost a synonym of systematization. It is bringing order out of chaos, having one definite everlasting location for each definite kind of material-and keeping that material always there. A bookkeeper with a million accounts can always turn to each one, because there is only one place to look for it, and it is always in that place. Classification, and an index, do the trick. It is these that enable you to put a thousand subjects in an encyclopedia, or a thousand kinds of merchandise in a stock room, and yet find in a flash any particular subject or article you may demand.

More tips to organize your day's work