and much fatigue. The waste of
energy comes from using unnecessary muscles, and the fatigue is partly
due to this waste of energy. But even apart from this waste of energy,
an habituated act is performed with less fatigue. The various muscles
concerned become better able to do their work. As a result of
habituation there is, then, greater speed, greater accuracy, less waste
of energy, and less fatigue.

If we look not at the changes in our work but at the changes in
ourselves, the changes in our minds due to the formation of habits, we
find still other results. At the beginning of practice with the
typewriter, the learner's whole attention is occupied with the work.
When one is learning to do a new trick, the attention cannot be divided.
The whole mind must be devoted to the work. But after one has practiced
for several weeks, one can operate the typewriter while thinking about
something else. We say that the habituated act sinks to a lower level of
consciousness, meaning that as a habit becomes more and more fixed, less
and less attention is devoted to the acts concerned.

Increased skill gives us pleasure and also gives us confidence in our
ability to do the thing. Corresponding to this inner confidence is outer
certainty. There is greater objective certainty in our performance and a
corresponding inner confidence. By objective certainty, we mean that a
person watching our performance, becomes more and more sure of our
ability to perform, and we ourselves feel confidence in our power of
achievement.

Now that we have shown the results of habituation let us consider
additional illustrations. In piano playing, the stimuli are the notes as
written in the music. We see the notes occupying certain places on the
scale of the music. A note in a certain place means that we must strike
a certain key. At first the response is slow, we have to hunt out each
note on the keyboard. Moreover, we make many mistakes; we strike the
wrong keys just as we do in typewriting. We are awkward, making many
unnecessary movements, and the work is tiresome and fatiguing. After
long practice, the speed with which we can manipulate the keys in
playing the piano is wonderful. Our playing becomes accurate, perfect.
We do it with ease, with no unnecessary movements. We can play the
piano, after we become skilled, without paying attention to the actual
movements of our hands. We can play the piano while concentrating upon
the meaning of the music,