By conversing with intelligent and experienced persons, and by your own experiments, you can get much valuable information about your work.
Booker T. Washington
The Public Record
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite.
gutenberg.org
And then don't be content with what you get out of books and newspapers, for that information is only the result of some other person's experience.
Be sure that you know all--or as nearly as possible all--there is to be known about milking cows.
The point is, that we want to be constantly on the lookout for ways of improving whatever work we are engaged in, whether that work be milking cows or doing something else.
If the boy who milks cows now does that thoroughly, by doing it he may lay the foundation to go to Congress later.
You should be constantly on the lookout for chances to make yourselves more valuable to your present employer, and more efficient in your work for him.
In the first place you should be continually on the lookout for opportunities to improve yourselves in your present work.
So long as a man does his whole duty in what he is engaged in, he is not to be condemned for looking for something better to do.
It is natural and praiseworthy for a person to be looking for a higher and better position than the one he occupies.
It was this quality in the first boy that made him valuable and caused him to rise.
He was always ready to be at the store before time; and then, when the bell rang to stop work, he would go to his employer and ask him if there was not something more that ought to be done that night before he went home.
The first boy did a dollar's worth of work for fifty cents.