A highly effective person's principle, or Follow the law of holes
NOT faster, deeper or harder!
In my Northern Sotho class at university, one of my classmates came from a small town in a farming community.
And because the subject wasn’t as popular as, say accounting – with thousands of students in a rugby-stadion-sized lecture hall – the lecturer got to know us and where we came from, pretty well – we were around 30 students in a small and intimate bedroom-sized lecture nook.
The lecturer would joke that my classmate came from a place with a farm gate in the middle of the main street.
He also allowed us to say Pass! when he asked a question and you didn’t know or didn’t want to give the answer.
But you couldn’t use this Pass! in exam papers to help you pass the subject.
In the year this lecturer was busy getting to know us all too well, Stephan Covey’s book on The 7 habits of highly effective people came out.
In it, he argues that if you want to change – yourself, your relationships at home and at work – you have to start from the inside-out.
The habits he presents aren’t really habits the way we normally think of habits. It’s more like principles that, if you incorporate them into your life, you improve your character (your inside) and therefore become effective (your outside).
His advice boils down to:
Know what you want for your life
Decide how you’ll go about getting there
Do the important-but-not-urgent things first
Think win-win in your dealings with others
Seek first to understand, then to be understood
Cooperate creatively with others
Sharpen the saw
🪚 Since many of us are not from an agricultural background like my former classmate, let me say a bit more about the “sharpen the saw” metaphor:
Imagine you’re using a saw to cut down trees. You’re working hard but things are slowing down.
Someone asks you, Why don’t you take a break to sharpen the saw?
No, you tell them. I’m too busy and still have a lot of trees to cut down.
That is in essence what today’s quotes are about.
Take a pause and make sure you’re dealing with the real issue:
ladders and walls
✨ If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.
~ Stephen Covey The 7 habits of highly effective people
holes in the ground
✨ If you dig a hole and it’s in the wrong place, digging it deeper isn’t going to help.
~ Seymour Chwast (found in James Clear’s newsletter)
water frenzy
✨ When you’re drowning, you can’t just swim faster.
~ Chris Guillebeau Time anxiety
working it
✨ If whatever you’re doing isn’t working, don’t do it harder.
~ Martha Beck The way of integrity
more holes in the ground
✨ If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
~ Wikipedia’s first law of holes
[The second law of holes is: When you stop digging, you are still in a hole.]
If all this talk about saws got you curious, here, I’ve got you covered: 33 different types of saws – with pictures!
Hope you’ll take some time to check the position of your ladder, float a bit and/or put down the shovel.
And just to show that I remember at least one thing from the Northern Sotho class, I’ll say goodbye with:
Sepela gabotse!
D