How sharp is your axe?

Abraham Lincoln famously said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

We won’t today discuss in detail Abraham Lincoln, the extraordinary 16th president of the United States, or Daniel Day-Lewis who brought him to life trough truly memorable acting that won him an Oscar, but it is definitely worth one day looking at Lincoln’s leadership style, visionary message and what he did to abolish slavery. Truly inspirational. 

Anyhoooo back to Abraham’s Axe.

What do you see, think, and feel when you read this?

To me the two main concepts here are around time management: preparation and where to focus your time.

You can be the strongest lumberjack in the world, but with a dull axe, you are in trouble. The axe is a strength multiplier. You leverage, you expand.

Thinking about the topic, learning how to learn, improving before doing… All these things are strength multipliers. You can work hard, hustle, put in the hours, do the work, etc., but the magic happens when you aim to perfect your skills beforehand. Think before doing. 

Most would spend the 6 hours trying to chop down this god damn tree! Focusing on the doing, rather than the thinking beforehand. 

This seems to be the curse of our modern times. We need to do, be busy or, even worse, look busy. The concept of looking busy is fascinating don’t you think? We do “things”. But is it for us or for others, is it important or urgent?

Everyone who wants to be busy is busy. But are we productive?

There is a difference between lining up your next 10 minutes in a set of remote activities and intentionally aiming at something which might require actually not doing anything or doing something different that we would have initially thought.

Productivity requires skill, persistence, and good judgment. Productivity means that you have created something of value.

Perhaps your self-created busy-ness is causing you to be less productive and certainly less effective.

So, what do you spend your time doing? A sharper axe is way more effective than one that is blunt.

QUESTION…

what do you spend most of your time doing?