This
week is the last of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. If you recall, from earlier, the first three habits were
characterized as “Private Victories.” And, the second three
habits Covey called “Public Victories.” As one might expect, the
private victories come before the public victories.
This
final habit is all-encompassing and universal. The idea comes from
that old anecdote which says, if you have five hours to chop down a
tree, four of those hours should be spent sharpening your saw.
We
all know that without effort it is virtually impossible to stay
sharp. Covey
writes, “As soon as we leave the external discipline of school,
many of us let our minds atrophy.” I believe this is a rather
unfortunate mistake. To counter this natural tendency to atrophy I
like a quote I once heard. The quote said, “The only time you can
coast is when you are going downhill.”
For
most of us, it takes a crisis for us to work on improving ourselves.
Knowing this, Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying, “Every
generation needs a revolution.” But, Jefferson was being
overzealous.
I
agree with Peter Drucker who said, “We now know that 'revolution'
is a delusion...It results from senile decay, from the bankruptcy of
ideas and institutions, from failure of self-renewal.” Alexis de
Tocqueville pointed out that revolutions do not demolish the prisons
of the old regime; they enlarge them.
To
my way of thinking, staying sharp, self-renewal, entrepreneurship,
and growth are all virtually synonymous. Entrepreneurship is
fundamentally about renewal. It is about constant, never-ending
improvement. It is about growth, which I believe is life's imperative.
I
talk a lot about my love for Peter Drucker. But, if I had to pick one
book, as my favorite of all time, it would probably be Flow by
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. As it turns out, Csikszentmihalyi used to
teach at the same school as Drucker. Actually, Mihaly is still there
though Peter has passed.
There
are so many important lessons to take away from the book Flow.
However, for our purposes today, I wish to point out one lesson in
particular. If you really understand what Csikszentmihalyi is saying,
you realize that growth is the imperative of life.
If
you will allow me to get nerdy for a minute, I would like to make a
quick reference to physics. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is a
governing principle of the cosmos. Without getting too deep into it,
just understand that the second law has to do with a concept known as
entropy.
To
put it in lay terms, entropy is practically synonymous with the words
decay and death. If you truly understand entropy, you realize that
life exists because it can. And, life is completely dependent on
growth. It is like what the character Andy said in the move The
Shawshank Redemption. We need to either, “Get busy living, or
get busy dying.”
Sharpening
the saw is the living part. It is growth. You may know the name Ray
Kroc from McDonald's fame. Kroc put it this way, “As long as you
are green, you are growing. As soon as you are ripe, you start to
rot.” In slightly different terms, Steve Jobs said, “Stay hungry.
Stay foolish.”
However
you wish to think of it, growth is the imperative and we must always
sharpen our saw. Covey states, “I commend to
you the simple practice of spending one hour a day every day doing it
– one hour a day for the rest of your life.” Sounds good to me.
