Sharpen The Saw

Sharpen The Saw

Alun: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Effective Statistician podcast. My name is Alun Bedding and I’m sitting in for Alexander on these Friday episodes. On these Friday podcasts, I’ll explore things that can help a statistician become more effective. The first of these topics I want to tackle is around continuous development, which is sometimes called Kaizan in Japanese and referred to by steven covey and the seven habits of sharpening the saw. Most recently steve mallett and myself participated in a webinar on the book the seven habits Which was part of the psi book club series And if you’ve missed that there will be a recording available soon through psi and if you’re not a psi member Then I would encourage you to join PSI because the webinars are one way which you’ll you will benefit from being a member Alexander also wrote a topic on this in linkedin quite recently And how it [00:01:00] connects to?

the leadership of statisticians The derivation of why it’s called sharpening the saw goes back to the story that stephen covey talks about which is coming across somebody trying to cut down in a trees in a wood the person doing the cutting is cursing and swearing and saying I can’t do this.

Can’t do that So they’re going to cut down You come up to him and ask him what’s the problem? And the woodcutter then replies my saw is so blunt. I’ve been taking hours to do this. It’s so blunt. So you just asked a simple question. Why don’t you sharpen the saw? And he looks at you blankly and says, I’m too busy sawing.

That’s interesting. How often do we not do this continuous renewal, but we wait until things go wrong? Think about our health, for example. If we don’t do this continuous renewal on our health, then something will go wrong in our body, and we’ll have some sort of illness. If we think about it with our car, [00:02:00] how often are we ever too busy to get fuel?

Doesn’t make any sense whatsoever that continuous renewal with our car. We get serviced We have an mot we get fuel for it that all goes into making the car run more efficiently So sharpening the saw is about keeping us in our best shape to be effective statisticians But it is a balance. Alexander writes, to stay effective, we must invest in our continual growth from a physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual perspective.

In the seven habits, this, along with the first habit of being proactive, are such key habits to making all of the seven habits work. Because without those, you cannot effectively practice the other habits. How can you? Be proactive and then think with the end in mind and put things first things first If you’re not having a renewal on [00:03:00] yourself, and how can you ever think about being proactive in that situation?

So what’s involved with this continuous renewal? Firstly we must all find our own path to this. I’m not going to tell you need to do this You need to do this. You need to do this. It’s all Individual, but i’m going to give you some points on how I do it But this isn’t the only way there’s many other ways and you need to figure out what is the best way of doing this So first let’s dig into the physical element.

Most people will think about this as well, I need to exercise. I need to have good nutrition. I need to rest. All of those aspects need to sleep, which I’m going to talk about in a minute. I would actually change the word From exercise here to movement. Exercise gets people a bit worried. I need to be sweating like mad in a gym and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah to do the exercise, do the physical element.

No. Let’s think about how can we move more? And a number of health [00:04:00] professionals and podcast hosts who are again, health professionals have talked about this and this could be simply as simply walking. In fact, Cal Newport talks about whenever you have a problem, take it for a walk. And I, when I coach people, I often encourage people to stand because that movement unlocks different aspects of thinking and get them to move in different places.

It’s also important when you’re coaching, you might want to move, walk with them and walking with them. It really opens their mind up to something different. So if you’re stuck on a problem, Take it for a walk. Try walking with that problem in mind. But only that problem. Just make sure you carry a notebook so any solutions you come up with, they’re always going to be there.

And I’m going to talk a little bit in a minute about why only that problem. The other thing we should be doing is taking small breaks between meetings. [00:05:00] It’s quite a simple thing to do just take a five minute break Rehydrate go out and if you can in the fresh air You’ll find That this little break and this little tactic will actually make the rest of your day and all of your meetings much more productive Because you’re aerating your brain you’re getting some hydration inside of you It will make you feel better our bodies are made up of 80 percent water So it goes to only goes to show that if you are Dehydrated that’s not going to be good, but that’s not be good to being effective and productive the other aspects that I would really Like people to focus on in terms of a physical aspect is sleep We all think about sleep as being, one of the nice to haves and again, it is individual but the sleep expert professor Matthew Walker Has talked about sleep being the best and most freely available performance and enhancing drug that [00:06:00] is Think about it.

Remember the last time You got a fantastic amount of sleep and how you felt and then contrast that with a time when your sleep was poor It might be I don’t know you’ve been on a long plane journey. For example, you got jet lag Think about those times and contrast them be reflective on contrasting them.

So that’s the physical element. Let’s think about the mental element I’ve already mentioned that taking a problem for a walk helps. This is physical, but it’s also links into the mental problem. And what you’ll see is all of these aspects of sharpening and saw all fit together quite nicely. But I said earlier on about only taking that problem out, that single problem.

I did not say take problems out with you. Because the problem when you start taking problems You’re going to be jumping [00:07:00] from one to the other And what this does in terms of context shifting is it means that your mind takes around 20 minutes if you’re shifting from one task to another to actually be fully enveloped in that particular task.

So if you’re constantly context shifting, you are never going to be fully enveloped within that task or that problem. So taking a single problem out for an hour’s walk or 30 minutes walk You are going to get more achieved in that 30 minutes than if you take several problems out at the same time The other thing from a mental sector though that can be done Is in terms of Reading is a mental activity.

Again, don’t try to read while having your emails open or your phone on it. Take the reading, take it away from your desk, take it to a different place, a different part of your office where you’ve printed it, you’ve got it with you. That is all you’re looking, you’re focusing on. And [00:08:00] from that, you’ll learn things and I’m going to say the same about books as well.

I would say the same about watching good podcasts or listening to good podcasts or watching good recordings of webinars, documentaries, anything that’s feeding your brain. This is all about the mental element, but do it without context shifting, without trying to multitask while you’re doing things.

One of my former colleagues and friends of the show. Caspar Rufibach was excellent at this. I know that he would go up, for example, into the mountains and take a problem with him up there and this would lead to him getting so much done. But again, pick whatever works for you. I personally time block my day.