One of the books that really influences my thinking is Stephen Covey's "The seven habits of highly effective people". In this post I thought I could share how I am implementing the seventh habit of "sharpening the saw".
The story behind the principle is that of two woodcutters (sorry, trees and tree huggers!). The first woodcutter just kept cutting trees for eight hours a day with his saw. The second woodcutter spent the first hour each day sharpening his saw and cut trees only for seven hours each day. At the end of a month, the second woodcutter had vastly outperformed the first and also looked much less tired compared to the first one.
In today's world, especially when it comes to the IT industry, I can see these two woodcutters at all workplaces. The people who look like the first woodcutter work very hard and get quite tired by the end of the day. They don't seem to have a lot of fun at work. They are usually working on putting out fires at work, meaning they work on urgent and pressing matters all the time. They look quite burnt out at the end of the day. Usually they need some alcohol or TV after work to wind themselves down. The people who look like the second woodcutter work hard too, but they seem to be energized by their work and more productive every day. They also seem to have a lot of fun at their jobs and seem to help others a whole lot more. Somehow you feel quite relaxed and are at ease when you are around the people from the second group. They also seem to have enough energy at the end of each work day that they can spend time on more demanding tasks like helping kids with their homework or doing little chores at house in the evenings.
To implement this principle into my life, I decided that I was going to evaluate how much I was learning each day at work. On some days, the projects I do at work provide opportunities for learning something new. On those days, I don't need to separately dedicate an hour first to learn something new. But I found that at least half of my days are spent on just doing mundane work - work based on what I already knew. On these days, I decided I would spend the first hour learning something closely related to work and projects, but not exactly work on the project my boss gave me. What I found out was, though this time was spent on something else, it paid me back multiple times in the long run. Also it kept my brain fresh with ideas and gave me alternate ways of thinking about a problem at work.
Some really smart companies like Google realize the value of this and give their employees 20% of the time to work on their own projects. These companies invest in their employees. But other short-term thinking employers think of this as a waste of time. If our employer is in the latter category, then we need to take charge of ourselves and improve ourselves. After all, no one cares more about our success than ourselves!
In my previous job, I did not have the luxury of doing my own stuff for the first hour each day, so I actually spent an hour outside of my work hours to do the learning. After about a year of doing that, I was ready to move up and take on a more responsible job. This new job gives me plenty of flexibility to learn at work itself, so I give myself the first hour of my office hours to learn something new. Currently I am working in the fields of data science, machine learning and big data. There is never a lack of things to learn in these fields. I have about a dozen things in my radar to learn next.
Another way to implement this strategy is to participate in a mailing list and try to help out others with their problems. I was active on StackOverflow for about a year when I was learning Solr. It was a very rewarding experience. I could see what challenges people faced in their jobs and solved many practical problems. I would have never even thought of many things had I not looked at StackOverflow. Participating in such platforms helps us learn things that we would have never thought of ourselves to learn. For about a year, this was just a hobby for me, but a year later, a project came up at my company that no one knew how to solve efficiently. It took me a very short time to figure out how to do that project in a scalable manner with Solr. I took on that project and worked on it for a few months. It worked amazingly well and scaled to well over ten times the data my employer initially had (with the same hardware we were using)!
A huge benefit I found by spending the first hour at work learning is that I remain positive for the rest of the day, irrespective of how the work for my employer turns out that day. This is similar to the positive energy you feel if you work out in the mornings. Doing such high RoI (Return on Investment) tasks first thing in the morning helps us tremendously in the long run.
In summary, practicing the habit of "sharpening the saw" has multiple rewards and something we should practice every day in our lives.
The story behind the principle is that of two woodcutters (sorry, trees and tree huggers!). The first woodcutter just kept cutting trees for eight hours a day with his saw. The second woodcutter spent the first hour each day sharpening his saw and cut trees only for seven hours each day. At the end of a month, the second woodcutter had vastly outperformed the first and also looked much less tired compared to the first one.
In today's world, especially when it comes to the IT industry, I can see these two woodcutters at all workplaces. The people who look like the first woodcutter work very hard and get quite tired by the end of the day. They don't seem to have a lot of fun at work. They are usually working on putting out fires at work, meaning they work on urgent and pressing matters all the time. They look quite burnt out at the end of the day. Usually they need some alcohol or TV after work to wind themselves down. The people who look like the second woodcutter work hard too, but they seem to be energized by their work and more productive every day. They also seem to have a lot of fun at their jobs and seem to help others a whole lot more. Somehow you feel quite relaxed and are at ease when you are around the people from the second group. They also seem to have enough energy at the end of each work day that they can spend time on more demanding tasks like helping kids with their homework or doing little chores at house in the evenings.
To implement this principle into my life, I decided that I was going to evaluate how much I was learning each day at work. On some days, the projects I do at work provide opportunities for learning something new. On those days, I don't need to separately dedicate an hour first to learn something new. But I found that at least half of my days are spent on just doing mundane work - work based on what I already knew. On these days, I decided I would spend the first hour learning something closely related to work and projects, but not exactly work on the project my boss gave me. What I found out was, though this time was spent on something else, it paid me back multiple times in the long run. Also it kept my brain fresh with ideas and gave me alternate ways of thinking about a problem at work.
Some really smart companies like Google realize the value of this and give their employees 20% of the time to work on their own projects. These companies invest in their employees. But other short-term thinking employers think of this as a waste of time. If our employer is in the latter category, then we need to take charge of ourselves and improve ourselves. After all, no one cares more about our success than ourselves!
In my previous job, I did not have the luxury of doing my own stuff for the first hour each day, so I actually spent an hour outside of my work hours to do the learning. After about a year of doing that, I was ready to move up and take on a more responsible job. This new job gives me plenty of flexibility to learn at work itself, so I give myself the first hour of my office hours to learn something new. Currently I am working in the fields of data science, machine learning and big data. There is never a lack of things to learn in these fields. I have about a dozen things in my radar to learn next.
Another way to implement this strategy is to participate in a mailing list and try to help out others with their problems. I was active on StackOverflow for about a year when I was learning Solr. It was a very rewarding experience. I could see what challenges people faced in their jobs and solved many practical problems. I would have never even thought of many things had I not looked at StackOverflow. Participating in such platforms helps us learn things that we would have never thought of ourselves to learn. For about a year, this was just a hobby for me, but a year later, a project came up at my company that no one knew how to solve efficiently. It took me a very short time to figure out how to do that project in a scalable manner with Solr. I took on that project and worked on it for a few months. It worked amazingly well and scaled to well over ten times the data my employer initially had (with the same hardware we were using)!
A huge benefit I found by spending the first hour at work learning is that I remain positive for the rest of the day, irrespective of how the work for my employer turns out that day. This is similar to the positive energy you feel if you work out in the mornings. Doing such high RoI (Return on Investment) tasks first thing in the morning helps us tremendously in the long run.
In summary, practicing the habit of "sharpening the saw" has multiple rewards and something we should practice every day in our lives.
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