Sharpen Your Saw

In order to achieve major goals, I suggest that people strive to accomplish one goal-oriented activity every day; no matter how small. Imagine accomplishing one goal-oriented activity every day, five activities every week, 20 every month, etc.... Your life would really be impacted! And to be sure of maximum productivity, I recommend turning off all phones and e-mail while working on this one important activity every day. Yes, turn OFF phones and e-mail for this limited period of time.... say - one hour .... so there are no distractions. YIKES! You'd think I asked people to slice their wrist or drink acid. "Impossible! I need to be accessible." "My clients expect me to respond immediately." "My boss would have my head." "There could be an emergency!"

Quite frankly, if there really was an emergency, believe me, you would be found. But the key concept here is that if you don't make time to focus on those things that really matter and get you closer to achieving your goals, then you'll never get ahead.

Which brings me to a story that I attribute to Dale Carnegie. There once were two wood choppers working side by side. One wood chopper chopped wood diligently all day long. He started chopping early in the morning and took no breaks until lunch. He ate a quick lunch and got back to chopping wood all afternoon. The second wood chopper, however, started chopping wood early in the morning, but then stopped for a nice mid-morning break. He chopped wood until lunch and took a fine little nap before returning to work. At the end of the day both wood choppers looked at their wood piles and noticed that the second wood chopper's pile was bigger than the first.

"How could that be?" screamed the first. "How is it that your wood pile is bigger than mine when every time I turned around you were either taking a nap or taking a break!"

"Did you notice," said the second wood chopper, "that every time I took a break I was sharpening my saw?"

Moral: Remember to make time to sharpen your saw every day. You will be amazed at how much quicker you achieve your goals.