Sharpening the saw

Suppose you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to saw down a tree.

“What are you doing?” you ask.

“Can’t you see?” comes the impatient reply. “I’m sawing down this tree.”

“You look exhausted!” you exclaim. “How long have you been at it?”

“Over five hours,” he returns, “and I’m beat! This is hard work.”

“Well why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw?” you inquire. “I’m sure it would go a lot faster.”

“I don’t have time to sharpen the saw,” the man says emphatically. “I’m too busy sawing!”

Excerpt from Stephen R. Covey’s “The 7 habits”

sharpening part one

We just returned from one week of vacation (first time in 10 years without kids - what a joy to revive the relation with my wife…) in Muhlheim/Mosel (Hotel highly recommended), Strasbourg (city is great, the “hotel” is not recommended) and finally Colmar (great hotel from 1565, great food). Even though I brought the laptop, I didn’t work - and it was good.

sharpening part two

I have written a lot of code and a lot of text in the last months (you will read more about the writing soon), and I’ve gone through 3 or 4 keyboards (two white Apple keyboard; they are just lousy, a Microsoft “ergonomic 4000 something” lousy one and now one of the new Apple aluminum ones; which I adore - so far).

Still, my hands and wrists hurt a lot. Triggered by Giulio, I started to look into Dvorak and played a bit with it. Further research led me to the german biased NEO layout. I’ve been struggling with it for the last few days. It’s a pain to unlearn 25 years of QWERTY and my current typing speed is abysmal. But there is (slow) progress. And you have to love a layout that makes it easy to type :-).

sharpening part three

Watching the following, final lecture by professor Randy Pausch who has a life expectancy of 3-6 months, is an amazing experience. Carve out the 90 minutes of your day and be inspired!

(via TechCrunch)

sharpening part four

Enjoy! (there are several parts)

(play that bass)

sharpening part five

Enjoy!

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