Sharpen The Saw
LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PLATFORMS
Audio Transcript:
I'm not proud to say, I did not at all flourish on last week's Flourish Friday. And I want to talk about that. But first, real quick, we appreciate a review.
Obviously, as always, give us how many of the stories you think we're worth.
If we've said something that's been beneficial to you, or you've taken something out of this podcast, please review it, add some comments, whatever you can do, we are grateful for it.
So last Friday, yeah, I sure thank you for getting out an episode that was pre-recorded from something else we did. I was not able to record a podcast. I didn't even know what planet I was on.
I was in the ER. Yeah, great. I rate five stars.
I go to the ER. I'm just kidding, obviously, and I'm being a jerk about it. I found myself, how to get there?
I found myself in a spot where these last, as you know, we've talked about this, I really, I refocused on my health towards the end of last year. I found, yeah, in my time, yeah, I'm always kind of doing this thing. We're always optimizing.
I get it. But I really had some good successes. And what I did with that new energy and that new, is I poured more work on.
I just piled, piled, piled, piled. And what happened is I began to feel that wear on me, and I didn't take the right measures. And so I ended up in the ER with some stuffing stuff and whatever else, and you don't need all the details.
But the point is, I wasn't taking care of myself. I wasn't taking care of myself. And so I think that happens to maybe a few of us in earshot right now.
Where we just got a lot going on, right? So we're dads, we're moms, we've got our families going on, husbands, wives, partners, whatever. We've got our community that's maybe they're frustrating or there's something, there's opportunity.
You know, it's not always the bad stuff, right? It's all the good stuff. You're excited about the things.
All of that creates stress in our bellies and whatnot. And then obviously there's work, right? And whatever your role is, it can be heavy at times, or it can be a lot.
And again, I'm not here to say stress is bad. I think stress is actually fantastic.
When stress, when it's proper, when it's coming at us in waves or in moments that we can have stress and de-stress and stress and de-stress, that stuff is magic, and really I think shapes us to be even better.
And so we can spin a whole podcast on that. So this isn't a anti-stress podcast. I'm not saying, you know, don't stress yourself, don't do things.
Yeah, you actually, I'm okay with that. I think that's part of what gets us there. I'm also saying, okay, let's go back.
So yes, I had too much of my plate, all those things. But I also wasn't, even though I was helping take care of myself, I wasn't like super taking care of myself.
I was doing enough to get some benefits, us feeling better, poured it right back into to work and whatnot. And so there is this notion of it's there's just that old rain barrel effect. I think I can't move.
There's every analogy. There's nothing new in the sun. But the idea of, OK, each rainstorm fills it up a little bit, fills it up a little bit.
Well, if you have lots of storms going on at one time, whether that be work, life, diet, movement, stress, whatever it is, that all adds to the barrel. And I just had the barrel overflow on last Friday. So here we are.
What am I doing about it? And what I'm not doing about it, let's talk about what I'm not going to do. I am not going to be the victim here.
And I'm not going to believe that lie that you have to throttle back or stop being awesome. Now, I'm going to keep being awesome, and I'm going to try to be awesome. Let's put it that way.
I'm going to try to be awesome at what I'm doing at work, at what I'm doing at home, and what I'm doing in my community. Absolutely. And father found a friend, man.
I'm going to try to be awesome there, but I'm also going to try to be awesome at taking care of myself and applying that same level of rigor and energy and all that towards making sure I am taking those moments to be still and be quiet and take care
of myself and eat right and move and all the things, right? And we again, everybody's got a different plan. Your plan may be different than my plan, but you got a plan.
And what I found is as I ramped up, the self-care stuff suffered and I spent less time taking care of self because I was feeling great and I could push on. And it's just stupid. Maybe you're maybe you're listening, then you're 25.
OK, great. You still have limits. Maybe you're 35.
You still have limits. 45, 55, 65. The limits become just a little more near and dear.
And so I just I refuse to see myself as a victim. I can crank it. I crank with the best of them.
And I will and I will continue to. But I will focus that same level of excellence on myself. And I think that's that's important.
So that's that's where I am. But I'm also there's things got to do. Right.
So when I look at my world, three areas that make sense to me that need some focus and, you know, your situation may be different. But, you know, upon my reflection, this is where I'm at. One is workload.
I've just got too much. Doesn't matter how much I manage the deck chairs on the Titanic. I have too much work on my plate.
And that doesn't mean, oh, I'm, you know, irreplaceable. It just means I'm not managing myself. I'm not communicating well.
I'm not delegating well. I'm not engaging and collaborating. Whatever it is, I'm not prioritizing.
It's too much. It's not anybody else's fault. I'm not a victim.
I've allowed too much work to pop on my plate. So there's some prioritization. There's all these things.
So I'm putting in some plans to look at my workload on a routine basis and make sure I'm being realistic about what I can accomplish. Again, I'm not saying I'm going to lower my expectations for, well, I probably need to adjust expectations here.
They're especially on the ramp up in the healing journey. But it's not about, like, oh, let's just ratchet it all down and numb ourselves and be half the employee we should be or half the CEO or whatever your role is.
But I do need to be realistic about the workflow or the workload. And I've got to make sure I'm not overwhelming myself with workload that's just too much. So that's one, workload.
The second one is all about really my schedule. And looking at what I'm doing and when I'm doing it. And I'm pretty good about that.
I manage that pretty well. But again, I will let things bleed. If I put something on the calendar for me to take care of myself and there's something that pops up with work or whatever, it's a soft place to land and I end up replacing it.
Whereas I wouldn't reschedule a customer call or something I'm doing externally or even something a lot of times internally with work. Or if I've got, you know, and this goes to the bigger picture, too.
Obviously, when you look at schedule or time management, you know, if the kids have an important event, I meet it. Or if my wife needs me for something, I meet those things.
So I try to put those in my calendar when I can as a tool, and I tend to not run over them. But if I've got stuff for self-care in there, soft place, man. It pushes, it flattens, it goes over and it's gone.
And then that time is spent. So I need to do a better job from scheduling management. And those two tie together.
Obviously, there's workload, then there's schedule. And you got to tie those together. And then I think there's another aspect of task management that comes with this.
Like how am I doing this for project management? So I've got the workload, I've got my schedule set, now the actual execution and how I'm going about that.
And if you're listening to this, you probably have this stuff pretty well sorted out, but I think all of us could always use tweaks. And mine needs a tweak.
I've got a little bit too much frenetic where I'm bouncing around, I got a lot of task switching. I don't have as maybe well managed tasks sometimes, or task management, project management, where I need improvement there. So those three things.
So it's workload, it's schedule, it's project management or task management. Those three areas for me, I'm going to be all over that for the next period here, the next 90 days of, you know, I'm in a 30-day sprint, focusing heavily on those.
And we'll see where I go. And I'd love to hear things you're doing. But again, I do want to circle back.
I am not a victim here, and I won't take that victim path. And I think that's super important when some of us get in these situations, and it's natural to go feel like, oh, I better cut way back. And maybe you do.
Maybe you do need to cut way back. This is not, we're not playing here. This is real stuff.
I mean, your asset is you. You are the asset. You're the golden goose.
You can lay lots of eggs. You're not an egg. You're the goose.
And if you aren't taking care of the goose, you're in real trouble, right? Hopefully, you guys know that fable. All right.
So what else? All right. So what's next?
Well, I do want to talk more broadly, and I don't want this to be all self-indulgent when we're talking about me. So I want to talk more broadly. What are we doing at the company?
I think this is an interesting thing. There's a phrase that I stole from Stephen Covey way back in the day called Sharpening the Saw. And I've always had some integration of sharpening the saw in my calendar forever, since then.
So you were talking a couple of decades' worth of always having some notion of how well did I follow it, how well did I do it. That's all things.
But the analogy is, think about somebody cutting, whether you're using an ax or a chainsaw, or whatever else, sharpening that blade allows you to move faster through your work and whatever your work is, your metaphorical work.
And if you just keep hacking away, or you just keep grinding with that chainsaw, at some point, it's not very sharp, and it's also then not very effective.
And you're putting a lot of effort, but you're only getting a little ways in, where if you took the moment, stopped for a second, sharpened that saw, then went after it, it's more effortless. There's effort involved, but it feels that way.
It actually is just like a hot knife through butter, as you're cutting. So that analogy, take that in, and I'm looking to continue to apply that with more earnest. I'm gonna be more earnest about it and more deliberate about making sure it's there.
But with the company, we did that this week.
We actually, complete coincidence that the Thursday night that I wig out, the following Monday, through Friday and the weekend, the following Monday, our company begins to sharpen the saw moment, where we're taking a moment and taking care of
ourselves. And what that means is we're doing all kinds of things in there. But I want to go back to the metaphor for just a minute.
When I was a kid and we were cutting wood, whether it was with my grandfather or my father or sometimes a bunch of folks, those times to sharpen the saw were great because it did get a little bit of rest, right? There's that.
But also, it was cool because then when you got back to work, you could go a lot faster, so you could kind of get there and get out. But that was also time to sit around and share wisdom.
I mean, I was learning all kinds of cool things from my grandfather or my father or whomever. And it was a really neat moment. And so we really, in some cases, really planned it out.
In other cases, people just kind of naturally bought into the metaphor where this week, we had a series of events each day of this past week where we had trainings. So we had learning scenarios where we go through.
We had time in the morning, then we had learning scenarios. Then we had the afternoon that was basically blocked off for different things each day.
And each individual person, we all have our own idiosyncratic needs and things, we're able to focus on things that were important. But there was some kind of light guidance of what needed to happen to the company.
Whether it was process approvals, right? Every periodic process approvals, clean up, inbox clean up, counter clean up, all the things that tend to get loose. It's kind of like a spring cleaning moment.
We had that, and it was pretty cool. I mean, for a first, we kind of rolled in. We had some folks just really just dove right in and embraced it.
And the team was great. And I found it to be really impactful, a positive, a real positive. And so we're going to do it again in the fall, and we'll see.
I imagine then, now, after everybody's had a taste, and we go into this thing and prepare it, it's really going to be impressive.
So I would encourage you, if you've got this kind of be able to influence this thing in your organization or your team, that kind of notion, whatever it looks like for you guys, might be valuable, might be worth trying out. It was cool for us.
So anyway, with that, I think this week has been an interesting week for me. It's been a week of humility. I've had to humble myself a little bit.
It's been a week of clarity.
And as I look going forward, I've already talked to you about the work models that I need to look into, the workload, the schedule, the task tracking, but also my own personal focus, my own personal rhythm needs to be looked at and improved.
And ultimately, I need to be accountable. I need to be accountable to myself. I need to be accountable for those that I love.
When you are a father, a founder, a friend, you've got lots of folks counting on you. And that's not an ego trip, but that's just a reality.
And what an idiot I would be to not take care of myself, to be able to be whatever I need to be for those around me and for myself. So yeah, so that's kind of my focus for now. I don't know.
We all have wake up calls. We have different things going on. Let's see where this one goes.
Follow me. Hold my feet to the fire. Hold me accountable.
Let's hope that I get there. I'd love to hear things you're doing that you found have been helpful for you in these situations, whatever. That'd be great.
But yeah, I think at this, what I would ask is if these are valuable to you, share these with a friend who... All right, let's see. Share them with a friend who takes great care of themselves in this way.
And or share them with a friend who maybe needs to take care of themselves before they get in a situation like I'm in. Because I'll tell you, I do feel grateful.
Not all situations end where I can be talking to you on a podcast later and everything's okay, and I just got to focus more. Right? So yeah, life is precious.
Do your things. I hope wherever you may be, I hope you take care of yourself, hope you're on a path, and I hope you're flourishing.
Alex Reneman is the founder of Mountain Leverage and Unleash Tygart and host of Flourishing w/ Alex Reneman. For 20+ years he has worked as CEO of Mountain Leverage, honing the concept of flourishing and experimenting with it in the business. In July of 2024, he decided to begin to share this idea with others, which led to his podcast, social content, and the plans for other initiatives in the future.
