In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey introduces Habit 7 with the following story:
Suppose you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to saw down a tree.
“What are you doing?” you ask.
“Can’t you see?” comes the impatient reply. “I’m sawing down this tree.”
“You look exhausted!” you exclaim. “How long have you been at it?”
“Over five hours,” he returns, “and I’m beat! This is hard work.”
“Well, why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw?” you inquire. “I’m sure it would go a lot faster.”
“I don’t have time to sharpen the saw,” the man says emphatically. “I’m too busy sawing!”
Covey then spends the remainder of that chapter going through how to “sharpen the saw” in every area of our lives, which includes the physical, social/emotional, spiritual, and mental. It’s easy nowadays to get stuck in a busy routine and neglect ourselves. Eventually, though, that catches up to us and we have to take time away from everything else and focus on self-care. When we do that, we’ll be more effective at our regular tasks than before when we were running on fumes.
The inspiration for this post coincided with my realization that I have been neglecting myself in the physical area by not getting enough sleep for the past few weeks. While I got away with it for a while, I realized yesterday that it was dragging down my mood, making it harder for me to focus, inclining me to get caught up in unimportant things, and making me worry. I feel a bit better today since I got a little more sleep last night and I’m going to keep examining myself to see if there are other ways I can sharpen the saw.
Buying and reading books like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has been an invaluable investment. Having in mind the life hacks I’ve learned from these types of books is what lets me figure out when something is off in my life and come up with an effective plan to fix it. Plenty of people have their lives in order to a much greater degree than I do, but I think everyone could benefit from reading great books. I’ll always be grateful to them and to their authors for helping me get my life together and get closer to being the person I want to be.