Abraham Lincoln:
If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.
I just started work at a new company. While there are more things to do now, I’m actually less stressed. The reason for that is because everything has been well planned by the team leads and project leaders. The timeline for the project is better documented, the tasks broken down into pieces that are easy to understand and implement. Every morning, the team gathers for a five minute session to share what we have done and what we are going to do - this really helps in accountability and monitoring of progress.
I came across Abraham Lincoln’s quote and realized sharpening the axe is something that I should pay attention to be it when executing a project or seizing opportunities.
I remember reading a quote about luck being the point where preparation and opportunities meet. Are we prepared to seize and maximize the opportunities that come our way. More importantly, are we prepared to recognize these opportunities?
We live in a society with two extreme forms of cults - the cult of youth and the cult of the so-old-they-shouldn’t-be-able-to-do-anything. The latter cult arises in part because of the first cult and what I see as our increasingly marginalization and disregard of those who are older - where once our old were venerated, their experience, cumulative knowledge and time-earned wisdom were recognized, we are now surprised that they have anything to offer and celebrate when they exceed our rather unjustified low expectations.
The cult of youth raises our expectations to the point where being successful isn’t really a success unless you do it by a certain age. Even if there isn’t an explicit time limit to achieve success, we push ourselves to achieve as quickly as we can and preferably as easy as possible.
You might have noted by now that I haven’t defined success. Success is a difficult beast to tame because it is different things to every individual. Whatever the definition of success, the questions I want to ask are this - are you too busy pursuing success in expense on working on the knowledge and skills that will help you achieve that success? Are you too eager to reach success that you don’t prepare and plan on how to get it?
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