The Story of Two Woodcutters — Why You Should Sharpen Your Axes

You must have heard a story of “Sharpen Your Saw” in your childhood. Let’s have a quick brush up on a story.
In a small village, there were two woodcutters Ram and Shyam. Every day, they cut the wood and come back home. One day, they decided to hold a competition in order to know who is a better woodcutter. The rules were simple — whoever produces the most wood in a day wins. So, the next day with their saw they took their position and started cutting woods as the competition starts. Both were chopping away at their fastest speed and after an hour or so Shyam suddenly stopped. When Ram recognize that there is no chopping sound from the opponent’s side he thought that Shyam must be tired and he will easily win the competition and continued to cut down his trees at double the pace.

After some time, Ram heard his opponent chopping again. So both of them carried on synchronously. Ram was started to feel exhausted when the chopping from Shyam’s side stopped once again. But Ram continued on as he was feeling motivated and smelling victory, with a smile on his face.
This continued the whole day. Every hour, Shyam would stop chopping for fifteen minutes while Ram kept going relentlessly. So when the competition ended, Ram was absolutely confident that he would take the triumph.

But when the result declared, Shyam had actually cut down more wood. How did this even happen?

“How could you have chopped down more trees than me? I heard you stop working every hour for fifteen minutes!”, exclaimed Ram.

Ram replied, “Well, it’s really simple. Every time I stopped work, while you were still chopping down trees, I was sharpening my saw.”

So, what do we learn here? We got to work hard but work smart as well. Everybody is so busy doing things and working so much harder to achieve their goal that they forget to take the necessary time to renew themselves. Work on your skills, improve them to learn and grow — to sharpen the “saw”.

Do not forget that every day you get a brand new opportunity to recharge, renew, and refine yourself. Devote some moments into sharpening your saw instead of chopping away doggedly: start working smarter instead of longer.