My grandfather was a lumberjack in northern Wisconsin during the turn of the last century. The virgin pine forests where he worked provided a steady supply of raw lumber to urban areas. Lumber was a prized commodity used to construct homes and other home-related products nationwide.
Being a lumberjack was a tough job – working in less-than-ideal conditions and enduring ever-changing weather conditions. The harvesting process involved one individual (a chopper) cutting initial paths into forests to mark trees with an axe to indicate the preferred side for the tree to fall. Sawyers followed with band saws, also known as buck saws, to cut them down. The job was more challenging if the lumberjack worked with a dull axe or saw than a sharpened one.
Keeping their saws sharpened was an essential aspect of their job. A dull saw blade can cause many problems, including reduced cutting speed, more cutting effort and reduced accuracy. Lumberjacks learned quickly that a sharp saw cuts faster and with greater precision, increasing production and reducing fatigue. A lumberjack’s lack of success isn’t due to a lack of effort or skill but rather a lack of the proper tools.
“It’s essential to know you are the instrument of your performance and, to be effective, you need to sharpen the saw to stay on top of your game.”
Similarly, in our own lives, we can work extremely hard, but if we don’t take the time to invest in ourselves and our well-being, we’ll eventually burn out from exhaustion and see a decline in production.
The late Stephen R. Covey, author of the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, writes, “Habit 7 is taking time to sharpen the saw. It’s preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have – you. This is the single most powerful investment we can ever make in life – investment in ourselves.”
Do you catch yourself saying, “I love the work, but the workload gets to me?” No matter how many years of experience is under your belt, whether it’s your first year or your thirtieth year, it’s essential to know you are the instrument of your performance and, to be effective, you need to sharpen the saw to stay on top of your game.
To keep your most significant asset (you) sharpened requires having a balanced program for self-renewal in the four areas of your life: physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual.
The Art of Self-Discipline
The person most responsible for holding back the growth of a business is the owner, manager or sales designer, and this is mainly due to an absence of self-discipline. We react immediately to every stimulus around us rather than focusing on the task.
According to the Cambridge dictionary, self-discipline is “the ability to make yourself do things you know you should do even when you do not want to.” Today’s perfect example is the shift to working from home and the need for self-discipline to be productive in this new environment.
We work in a free spirit environment, which often contradicts self-discipline. For many, structure is frowned upon; it’s too limiting, we are told, and it hampers creativity. Yet, self-discipline is necessary for any sustainable success.
Your worth in society is different from how busy you are. It’s about how efficiently and productively you use your talents. Time is your most precious, valuable gift. It is the currency of life. When you run out, you can’t get more. When your time is up, you’re done. President John F. Kennedy once said: “We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.”
Using time wisely includes prioritizing a balanced renewal. Renewal creates change and growth; it increases your capacity to handle adversity and challenges. Mental fatigue sets in without dedicating time to renew, leading to poor decision-making. This leads to an up-and-down, herky-jerky rate of growth that is emblematic of the entire kitchen/bath industry.
Steps to Improvement
If you want revolutionary improvements in (a) your effectiveness and (b) your business performance, you must take your self-discipline up several notches. Here are the five steps necessary for sharpening your saw:
- Read 30 – 45 minutes daily from business management, sales and self-improvement resources. This practice can assist in expanding your knowledge and skills.
- Exercise Regularly. Science teaches that, starting in your 40s, your body triggers a default aging cycle where you begin losing thousands of cells daily. This leads to decreased energy levels, additional stress and poor health. The only way to scientifically offset this decay is to exercise vigorously at least one hour per day, three to five days a week, for the rest of your life.
- Engage in Spiritual Renewal. Spiritual renewal will be different for each person. It’s engaging in activities that connect to our spirituality or a sense of purpose that can help us find direction, meaning and the sweet spot that generates jazz in our lives.
- Block out two days per month for formal, in-depth training, coaching or mentoring. You have to get away from the business to grasp, master and implement new spheres of knowledge and new ways of doing things. Clarity is achieved when we look at our business from the outside.
- Try out the newest technology applicable to your business as soon as it becomes available. For more tech-averse folks, adopting this discipline may be among the hardest. But it may also be among the most important, because as Professor Jim Collins noted in his iconic book Good To Great, technology has proven to be the single greatest factor in accelerating a company performance breakthrough.
The things you do regularly to sharpen the saw in any one dimension – whether it be physical, spiritual, mental or social/emotional – will positively impact other dimensions because they are so highly interrelated.
Renew is the principle – and renewal is the process that empowers us to move on an upward spiral of growth and change, of continuous improvement in our effectiveness…and hence in our business performance.
A saw can get dull when repeatedly used over and over again. It needs to be sharpened every once in a while to get the job done more efficiently. For us, it’s about taking a proactive approach to our well-being by engaging in activities that help us to grow, learn and recharge. Investing in ourselves can improve our effectiveness, productivity and overall quality of life. ▪
Dan Luck owns Bella Domicile in Madison, WI. He has been an SEN member since 2002 and has led the SEN Leadership Team since 2018, conducting scores of the group’s educational programs. Visit http://sendesigngroup/education for more information. Dan welcomes questions and comments at [email protected].