Sharpen your axe and hone your skills

 

There is an old story about a contest between two lumberjacks. The contest was that the lumberjack who could cut down the most trees by the end of the day would be the winner. The younger of the two was full of enthusiasm and ran off immediately into the woods and began swinging his axe and chopping down trees. As the younger lumberjack worked, he did not immediately hear his competitor chopping trees. When he eventually did, it spurred him to work harder and faster.  He frequently heard his competitors chopping stop and assumed they were taking breaks.  This filled him with confidence that he would win the competition. 

When the end of the contest finally came and the trees counted the older lumberjack had won. The younger competitor couldn't believe this and asked "How is this possible?  I heard you stopping every hour to take breaks!" to which the older lumberjack replied, "I didn't take any breaks, but I did stop to sharpen my axe."

While the younger man had worked hard and continuously it never occurred to him to sharpen his axe. He assumed brute force would win the day. While he accomplished a lot, he also left a lot on the table because he wasn't efficient.

The moral of this story is that you should always be sharpening your axe. In the world of business, that means that you should be continually learning new things, training, studying your craft and trying new things. You may work now by focusing on what you know now and working hard all day and into the night. Hard work is good, but learning and improving yourself is just as important as working hard. 

Set aside time every day for learning and development. Practice a new skill, read a book, read an online blog(Like this one!), watch an online video that teaches you a new skill. When you constantly learn new things, you'll create new solutions to existing problems. The big report you're working on that would have taken an entire day to produce might now take an hour because you've spent time learning how to manipulate and analyze data.  Instead of using a bruise force technique you've sharpened your axe and worked smart and hard. You can now achieve more than you could before.