Habit 7 – Sharpen the Saw

Sometimes we are so focused on “cutting the tree down” we forget that if we stop and take time to “sharpen our saw”, it will go much faster. We often ignore or forget this simple principle yet remembering this principle and practicing it daily will yield evolutionary results.

As we wrap up with the 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey we cover the last habit which is about personal renewal. If you’ve followed the series of blog articles I’ve been writing over the past few months, you will have gotten a taste of some of the concepts from this book and others. These concepts are so simple yet foundational to everything we do. Here is a quick recap

1. Be Proactive – Understand that you are responsible and choose your actions and this empowers you take charge in achieving what you want.
2. Start With The End In Mind – Personal Leadership. Determining the destination of your journey will help keep you on the path to reaching it.
3. First Things First – Personal Management. Focusing first on what is most important will result in more effective progress to your destination.
4. Win-Win – Seeking synergetic solutions that take into account both your needs and the other person’s needs will result in long term mutually beneficial outcomes.
5. Seek To Understand Before Being Understood – With the sole intent to understand another person, massive leaps in communication will result.
6. Synergy – Leverage our differences. By embracing people’s differences you can achieve amazing things that otherwise would not be possible.

Sharpen the Saw

One day there was a man in the forrest sawing a tree. He was there for 4 hours working really hard. His friend came by and said, “why don’t you stop and sharpen your saw, it will go much faster”. The man said, “I can’t, I have to cut down this tree”. An obvious situation to stop and sharpen the saw, yet in our day to day we often do not recognize the need to sharpen the saw nor make the time to do it.

Renewal

All the habits are presented sequentially, but they are actually all inter-dependent. For example, in order to be able to do win-win agreements you must be proactive, know your destination, seek to understand, and embrace differences. Improvement in any one of the habits affects all the others. Renewal is the habit of continual improvement, i.e. investing into your personal Production Capability. If you recall the goose that laid the golden eggs story, renewal is about the goose which produces the golden eggs and keeping that goose healthy and improving its abilities.

The four areas of renewal are:

1. Physical – Exercise, nutrition, stress management
2. Spiritual – Value clarification and commitment, study, meditation
3. Mental – Reading, Visualizing, Planning, Writing
4. Social/Emotional -Service, Empathy, Synergy, Intrinsic Security

Physical

Its pretty obvious that being physically healthy impacts everything else. If we are sick, we can not work or do most things. Many times we ignore the physical dimension because it is one of those important but not urgent things. I.e. exercise, eating well, getting enough sleep are not urgent matters until we get sick. It takes a while for the consequences of avoiding these things to occur but when they do, we then struggle to treat an Illness, to crash in a heap of exhaustion, or to have a really hard time with patience and listening due to lack of sleep.

I’ve recently decided to not bring any electronics into my bedroom because having easy access to my laptop/phone would trigger my habit of spending time on my laptop, or reading the news on my phone. The result has been that I have been getting a lot more sleep lately. As I deal with my kids during the day due to the current situation with Covid19, I find that the usual infighting does not trigger me as it usually does. I know for a fact that lack of sleep results in less patience and I see the opposite effect now.

Spiritual

Spiritual is about spending time figuring out the values we want to have in our lives, i.e. what is really important to us. These change over time or we have tendency to forget them. Creating a personal mission statement, practicing it, and adjusting it is part of Spiritual. Self reflection about how we are doing towards our values is important to allow us make adjustments.

Mental

Mental is about continual learning. One way to do this is by reading new books on a regular basis. Start with one book a month, then a book every two weeks, then a book a week. One way to accomplish this is to see yourself as a reader. By having that vision of yourself as a reader you will naturally gravitate to what readers do which is read on a regular basis. Scheduling time to read on your calendar is also a great technique to achieving this goal.

I’ve personally discovered that listening to books is easier, faster, and can be done during other activities like exercise. I also love when the author reads the book because you get a lot more than just reading the words. You get how they feel about what they are trying to teach. Recall that 7% of communication is in the words, and about 47% is in the voice intonations. Listening to the author gives you 47% more communication.

Reading books is great but practicing what we learn is critical to really get value. For example, reading a book about playing basketball will not make you a good basketball player unless you practice what you learn. I.e. you must apply what you learn in order to remember it, to get better at it, and to get value from it. This is how our brains work so let’s use that knowledge and get the most from what we learn.

Social/Emotional

We can do Social/Emotional renewal in our every day lives by practicing habits 4,5,6 having to do with public victory. Let’s say you want to improve a relationship that is strained. You can practice seeking to understand before being understood, going for win-win agreement if there is a conflict, and embracing/leveraging your differences when doing these things.

I have been practicing these habits with my kids and wife recently. I have many opportunities each day as we stay home together to try to understand why my kids may be upset. We constantly are negotiating to have them learn and also have them have fun, to eat healthy, yet have yummy meals, to entertain with video, yet have that entertainment be educational as well. With my wife/kids I work on understanding their point of view when they gets upset and also helping them to understand each other.

Combining Areas

I’ve combined reading, spiritual, and physical renewal into one activity which works for me. Every day I take a 30 minute walk through trails at our local park. During this walk I listen to an audio book that is generally about self improvement or other interesting topics. I learn by listening to a book and I also get spiritual value through it by being reminded of principles, values, and the things that are important to me like seeking to understand before being understood to improve my relationships. I then find that during my day I am more centered, I know my destination better, I have things to keep in mind and practice during the day, and I am more effective.

Amazing Things

As I’ve been practicing the 7 Habits, and other things I’ve learned, for the past many months and making lots of mistakes, I’ve noticed that things have started to change. I’m instinctively seeking to understand instead of trying to solve problems. I’ve found that just seeking to understand is actually easier because I don’t think about how to solve a problem or give advice, I can just listen to understand. I’m noticing that more often I reflect to people emotion and context automatically. I feel I understand more. I’ve also been able to get myself back on track after digesting the COVID-19 situation and relapsing to some of my old habits of watching videos and avoiding things I want to do as a way to deal with the stress and uncertainty. I am able to recognize how I tried to cope, why, and get myself back on track. I am thankful for this learning and being able to apply it in my life. Through the act of writing these articles in the hope that I can share some of what I’ve learned with you, I’ve also learned the material better. I hope you find some of these these ideas and concepts helpful to you and your journey and don’t forget that you need to practice what you learn in order to retain it and get value from it.

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