Are You Pushing or Sharpening?

By Audrey Seymour

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Well, it does turn out that the old man wins the wood chopping contest, but not for the reason you might think. Here's how the story ends:

"How could you have chopped more wood than I?" asked the puzzled young man. "I chopped more strongly and longer!" "Ah" said the old man. "You didn't notice that while I was sitting down, I was sharpening my axe."

Where in your life are you pounding away with all your effort, thinking that if you just push a bit longer you'll get things the way you want? Where do you need to stop and make sure that "your axe is sharp" and that you are cutting in the right direction?

Many of us are faced with a work ethic that we inherited from our parents' generation and the unique challenges of their time. From this perspective, we experience a greater sense of value when we are in the act of pushing to produce. Do you feel guilty when you are not accomplishing something? Have you ever found yourself thinking "At least I'm doing something!" when nothing seems to be working?

It can be helpful sometimes if you feel frozen in fear to just take an action to get your energy moving again. However, in today's hectic world, it is too easy to find ourselves pushing through tasks that we "have to do" or events that we "have to attend." But what is the cost to the quality of the result, even apart from the cost to you?

When I was a software development manager, some engineers on my team would feel that working until 1 am (no matter how tired they were) would insure that we met our deadline. As a final stretch to the finish line it was exhilarating for them, but when they pushed through exhaustion on a regular basis, they wrote code that was full of errors. And sometimes it took months to uncover all the bugs, not to mention fixing them!

The hidden costs of constantly pushing can creep up on you months or years later, when burnout or boredom shows up. Is your work feeling stale? Are you having trouble remembering why you wanted to start this business / take that job in the first place? You may not need a new job or a different line of work; you may only need to sharpen your approach to getting things done.

What would sharpening your axe mean in your work?

• Perhaps you've been so busy attending every possible networking event nearby that you don't have time to take courses to stay current in your field. Imagine instead choosing only the events that would draw your ideal clients and colleagues, and then getting reinspired with a valuable class in your free time.
  
  
• Perhaps your work places a value on presence, but you book your clients so closely together that you are edgy by the end of the day. Sharpening your axe might mean scheduling a 5-minute meditation break between each one to keep your presence clear and leave you energized by the end of the day.
  
  
• Or perhaps you're feeling pressured to sell a struggling product. Imagine instead taking the time to explore options for a totally new product that would serve your customers better and therefore sell better.

Only by being willing to step outside of the inertia of "pushing to get it done" and facing the discomfort of apparent "unproductivity" will you be able to cut through old patterns. It is then that you will be able to attain real leaps in productivity and fulfillment.

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