7 Habits of Effective Writers | #7: Sharpen the Saw
Table of Contents Show
In Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, there’s a story of a man who finds someone sawing a tree trunk. He learns this person’s been sawing away for more than five hours. When the man asks if it would go faster if he stopped to sharpen the saw, the other man replies, “I’m too busy sawing to stop!”
If you’re intent on being an effective writer, you need to invest in honing your edge—in other words, your skills, your mind, and your passion. It’s vital to keep yourself sharp for the work as sawing away with a dull edge only leads to frustration and burnout. Sharpening, however, takes many different forms, and that’s what we’ll be talking about in this final installment of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Writers. Habit 7: Sharpening the Saw is self-renewal, and it’s the one that keeps all the others going.
What is an effective writer?
With each of these habits, we’ve included our definition of what it means to be effective when it comes to writing. Here it is one more time: An effective writer knows why they do what they do and understands how their process will get them where they want to go. All of the habits support this goal, but Habit 7 will make all the difference when it comes to creating for years to come and achieving your goals.
Coming full circle with Habit 7
Have you found Habit 7? It’s on the outside of the diagram, and the arrow encircling all the other habits shows this one is recursive. It should be revisited again and again as you continually refine your process as a writer. Here, you can ask yourself questions.
Are you still heading in the right direction to meet your goals?
Are there any adjustments you need to make to any of the other habits?
How are you doing?
The purpose of Habit 7 is to ensure the other habits stay aligned with your ultimate goal.
Sharpen the saw in four categories
Self-renewal can take many forms, but to sharpen the saw, we look to rejuvenation in four main categories, or the four dimensions of our nature: physical, mental, spiritual, and social/emotional. Take a good look at each of these areas in your own life.
Physical
We’ll start with our physical dimension, something you might not often think about when it comes to writing. Perhaps you’ve already gotten yourself an ergonomic chair or know you need to find a better writing place than your bed, but there’s more to consider. Writers (who are often readers, too) spend a lot of time sitting. However, multiple studies show that sitting for long periods of time and general inactivity is bad for us humans, particularly our heart.* Taking care of your physical self in small ways now means you can keep doing what you love even longer. Doing at least thirty minutes of exercise a day goes a long way! Looking away from your screen is also helpful. Some people recommend looking away for twenty seconds every twenty minutes. You can also stand up while you do that and get a stretch in.
Mental
For the mental dimension, it’s important to continually keep your mind active and expanding. Outside of school, it’s easy to lose the discipline to keep learning. Reading, asking questions, interrogating assumptions can all help you renew your mind. Other kinds of writing can also be beneficial—journal your thoughts, experiences, and insights. You could even write letters—you might be surprised at how many great writers were equally prolific in their correspondence as they were in novels.
Spiritual
The third dimension of renewal is spiritual. To nurture this side, seek to be immersed in sources that inspire and uplift you. For this, you can go to literature, music, nature, or faith. We are strengthened by returning to our foundations, to our firmest beliefs, our why. What’s important to you? Where does your conviction to write come from? This is your big-picture perspective on yourself, and it’s important to remind yourself of it as often as you can. I love this quote by George Bernard Shaw:
“This is the true joy of life—being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.”
What is your purpose?
Social/Emotional
In the social/emotional dimension, we look back to what we talked about with Habit 6: Synergize. Nurturing this part of ourselves takes the form of service, volunteering, empathy, and connection—essentially, meeting with others. If you participate in a critique group, talk with a friend, or lend a listening ear, you are filling your social and emotional stores.
Practicing the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Writers
Renewing yourself in all four of these dimensions keeps you ready to do your best when you sit down to your words and your stories. A sharp saw means you are always effective.
And there we have it—seven habits!
In each of these articles, we’ve only scratched the surface of the potential for these habits to transform your creative work. I hope you can see how these habits can support you as a creative, now and even five or ten years from now. A long-term view of how you’ll stay creative is what makes you a craftsman, dedicated to perfecting your craft.
Sharpen your skills with an editor
As you might know, your editors here at Ground Crew are writers, too, and habits have always been important to us. We’ve been blessed to find people who’ve supported us in sharpening our edges, and we’d be thrilled if we could be those people for you. It’s our goal to help you take off, and that means making sure you have everything you need to create and keep creating. Whether you’re looking for technical support or simply encouragement, we’re here for you.
Thanks to Alessandro Erbetta on Unsplash for the photo in this post!
*If you’re interested in reading more on the health impact of being sedentary, here are two articles to check out:
Sitting All Day? This Is How It Could Be Affecting Your Heart Health (https://www.health.com/time-sitting-every-day-8400912)
Occupational Sitting Time, Leisure Physical Activity, and All-Cause and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2814094)
