Chapter Twenty Three

Sharpen Your Saw

Students often think that they can say ‘goodbye’ to education once they shift from the campus to the corporate world. But the fact is that the real learning starts from the corporate world. Whatever students have learnt academically puts them on the corporate ladder. However, in order to survive in the corporate world, they must work smart to acquire and hone new skills and abilities. Besides, they must also sharpen their skills continuously to race ahead of others.

Marshall Goldsmith in his book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful emphasizes on sharpening skills. People often get complacent with success and don’t improve their work within the organization. This proves to be costly in the later part of their life, as their peers and subordinates would outsmart them professionally. What has worked for someone to attain a certain proficiency might not work when they want to reach the next higher position. Hence, there is a constant need to improve and grow in this world. In addition, Stephen R. Covey emphasizes sharpening one’s saw in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Successful people have the habit of sharpening their saws constantly. They learn and grow continuously.

A Story of Woodcutters

If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my axe.

Abraham Lincoln

When others can do work within eight hours, if you take longer than that then there is something wrong somewhere in your working style. It is time to analyse where the mistake lies. Probably, you have not sharpened your saw while others sharpened it and executed their work within the given time frame. These days, people don’t reveal their trade secrets for fear of losing their relevance and importance. Trade secrets have become triumph cards at the workplace. Hence, you must be smart enough to find your own tools and techniques and secrets and strategies to sharpen your skills. And this must become a habit. Here goes the story of two woodcutters:

Don’t cut wood with an axe that is not sharp. First sharpen the axe and then use it to achieve your results much faster. Nowadays, smart work counts more than hard work. Two people had been given axes and asked to fell a tree within one hour. The first person hit hard, and after an hour he managed to fell the tree. The second person spent some time in sharpening the axe and then he hit the tree. Thus, he could fell it within one hour. Here the first person believed in hard work while the second person believed in smart work. The first person believed in strenuous efforts while the second person believed in effectiveness. Hence, when you sharpen your saw you deliver quality results within the stipulated time. Due to cut-throat competition, people try to ape others and get smarter. Hence, you have to be much smarter to stay ahead of others.

Solitude Is Fortitude

You need to take a break to recharge yourself. You need to go backward in order to move forward. You need to fail to move forward. Life is full of lessons. People must learn lessons and move forward without any let-up. At times, people work so hard that they don’t find time to relax. In fact, only when you relax you charge up and move forward. While relaxing, you get new ideas to do things better thus sharpening your mind. Similarly, people prefer moments of solitude as solitude is fortitude. Once you take a break you give rest to your body, it gets rejuvenated and the mind also gets active with new ideas and insights. Therefore, relax and sharpen your axe and then work. You will be surprised to see amazing results.

Tips to Sharpen Your Saw

Improvement is important and it is an essential ingredient for all individuals. They must improvise, innovate and energize themselves constantly to sharpen their saws. Here are some tips to sharpen your skills:

• Have an appetite for learning. Learning doesn’t mean reading books alone. You can learn from observation, teaching, training, experience and listening to others. Learn from everyone without any false ego.
• Invest a part of your earnings in learning and development. When you look at the western countries, they spend a good amount of money on books and training programs. For them, age is not a deterrent to pursue their passion.
• Invest your time in reading daily. Just as you take food for your survival, you also need to read daily to update and sharpen your skills. The noted writer, Christopher Morley, rightly said, ‘Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every Book day, something no one else is thinking’. He further adds that we should ‘Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity’.
• Learn from mistakes. We all make mistakes. But recognizing and realizing mistakes helps us prevent further mistakes in future, thus enhancing our success rate.
• Strive for excellence not perfection, as perfection is impossible. Striving to be at your best gives you great satisfaction and motivates you to move forward.
• Above all, share your knowledge as knowledge grows when shared. The more you share, the more pleasure you will derive out of it. You will be happy to see people growing in front of you from your knowledge.

The rapid growth in technology has compelled people to perform. Failing to do so leads to them getting eliminated. There is no meaning to life if there is no continuous value addition. Hence, learn from everybody and from all sources to sharpen your skills, not only to stay healthy but also to stay ahead of others.

Reinvention is an imperative. When you look at successful people, they reinvented with the changing needs and requirements and moulded themselves accordingly. Leaders cutting across the sectors and areas reinvent constantly. In fact, reinvention is the mantra for survival in today’s world. It helps cater better solutions to the pressing problems. In addition, people must empty their cups constantly so as to fill them with new ideas and insights. As Alvin Toffler rightly noted, ‘The illiterates of the 21^st century are the people who cannot unlearn, relearn and learn’. To conclude, everyone (from the peon to the principal and from a pauper to a prince) must sharpen their skills constantly so as to survive in this cut-throat competitive world. This will not only bring greater satisfaction to them, but also make a difference in this world.