How to Live 365 Days a Year
General Motors has been taking a beating in the press for being too generous to its employees. The automaker simply can’t compete against other car companies who treat assembly line workers as extensions of the robots that put the cars together. What a shame that GM can’t play a role in making its labor force happier!
It wasn’t always this way. When I was at a thrift store recently, I came across a collection of over 100 GM booklets from the 1950s that had been, as stated on their back covers, “Prepared especially for the GM Men and Women by the General Motors Information Rack Service.” The booklets, on an astoundingly wide variety of topics, had titles such as Is Your Memory Lame? Push Button Utopia: A Few Thoughts on the Future, Adventures of the Inquiring Mind, The Fabulous Future and How to Live 365 Days a Year.
What a treat it must have been to punch the clock at the end of a long day bolting on dashboards to walk over to the employee lounge (furnished, no doubt with Eames tables and chair) and peruse the Information Rack.
How to Live 365 Days a Year is one of the most practical self-help, lift-yourself-by-your-own-bootstraps, eastern religion-inspired booklets I'e ever read. Its nine "Important points to watch in living" are a blueprint to happiness:
- Avoid watching for a knock in your motor.
- Learn to like work.
- Like people.
- Say the cheerful, pleasant thing.
- Meet adversity by turning defeat into victory.
- Meet your problems with decision.
- Make the present moment an emotional success.
- Always be planning something.
- Keep life simple.
The section describing rule #7, "Make the present moment an emotional success, " has a piece of advice worth keeping in mind: "The only time we ever live is the present moment. It is the only time we ever have to be happy." That's about as profound as it gets, at least around here in the Mad Professor laboratories.
I hope to scan the entire booklet and put it online later this week. Keep your eye out for it!
Comments
Please scan this soon. I'd love to see it!
Posted by: Tim | April 17, 2006 10:18 PM
i adore and have begun collecting old manuals, tech guides, gadget pamphlets from the 1940s-1970s.
the fonts, the photos, the words themselves make the BEST unintentional pop art...i haven't yet decided exactly what to do with the stuff i've got. i've got a sick urge to cut some of it up for collages or whatnot...but the destruction would be a shame.
Posted by: becky | April 18, 2006 7:05 AM
And just remember, *everything* is just a little absurd.
Posted by: William | April 18, 2006 8:47 AM
Who needs Dr. Phil?
I can't wait to share the scans.
Posted by: Ape Lad | April 18, 2006 6:09 PM
rule 2: so true
Learn to like work.
Posted by: bloggaru | April 19, 2006 12:32 PM
I really dig the info from this pamphlet you found! I cannot wait to read it through. Thanks!
Posted by: Ramon BC | April 19, 2006 1:55 PM
Yes, please post it soon. I'd love to add this to my period ephemera.
Posted by: Dave | May 4, 2006 8:54 AM