Sharpen the saw

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Sharpen the saw is a metaphor and story to remind us to refresh and recharge ourselves.

When you're deep in, it may feel like you have no time to pause. No time to take a break, there's too much to get done. Perhaps no time to stop and think about how you're working. No time to step back and improve your processes or work on your tools. Maybe even no time to look after yourself, to recharge, to reflect, to take a walk.

As the metaphor goes, you may feel you have no time to stop and sharpen the saw. Until you do it, and then you may realise you have no time to not stop and sharpen the saw.

Sharpen the saw is habit 7 of Stephen Covey's classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Published 4 Dec 2022

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Yak shaving describes how when setting out to do something, you found you had to first do something else, which needed you to finish this other thing, and so on until you found yourself shaving a yak, or equally unrelated activity, to do the first thing you set out to do. It's pretty frequent in life — tidying your room? — and particularly resonates in software development, where when tackling one thing, you often find yourself fixing something else, which needs you to fix something else, and so on. Here's the ever brilliant xkcd on fixing problems. Yak shaving features, lovingly polished, in my book Big Ideas Little Pictures. More: Here's a brilliant 40s clip of Hal changing a lightbulb from Malcolm in the Middle, classic yak shaving Early yak shaving features in the song There's a Hole in My Bucket in which fixing a bucket requires straw, which requires a knife to cut it, but the knife needs sharpening, which needs a stone, which is too dry and needs wetting with water, which needs fetching...with a bucket The first I found of yak shaving was a short article on productivity in the first issue of Make magazine by Danny O'Brien and Merlin Mann. Yak in the style of Alison Green and Adam Stower's excellent children's book, What can you Stack on the Back of a Yak?…Yak shaving describes how when setting out to do something, you found you had to first do something else, which needed you to finish this other thing, and so on until you found yourself shaving a yak, or equally unrelated activity, to do the first thing you set out to do. It's pretty frequent in life — tidying your room? — and particularly resonates in software development, where when tackling one thing, you often find yourself fixing something else, which needs you to fix something else, and so on. Here's the ever brilliant xkcd on fixing problems. Yak shaving features, lovingly polished, in my book Big Ideas Little Pictures. More: Here's a brilliant 40s clip of Hal changing a lightbulb from Malcolm in the Middle, classic yak shaving Early yak shaving features in the song There's a Hole in My Bucket in which fixing a bucket requires straw, which requires a knife to cut it, but the knife needs sharpening, which needs a stone, which is too dry and needs wetting with water, which needs fetching...with a bucket The first I found of yak shaving was a short article on productivity in the first issue of Make magazine by Danny O'Brien and Merlin Mann. Yak in the style of Alison Green and Adam Stower's excellent children's book, What can you Stack on the Back of a Yak?

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