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“if you give me 5 hours to cut down a tree, I will spend the first 4 sharpening my axe” It’s a great motto and easily taken too far. Often the best way to lear
by Swizec 5y ago
“if you give me 5 hours to cut down a tree, I will spend the first 4 sharpening my axe”
It’s a great motto and easily taken too far. Often the best way to learn is to get started. Tacit knowledge is best learned by doing.
- sokoloff 5y agoIndeed. I've known many people that, if given 1000 hours to cut down a tree would spend 4 hours sharpening the axe, 500 hours watching YouTube tutorials on cutting down trees, 300 hours on axe reviews, and 195 hours arguing online about how to do it. I've sometimes been that person.
- LanceH 5y agoI can't get it done without numerous trips to Home Depot. At least one of those trips will be immediately after another, to buy what I was supposed to buy on the first trip, but where the first trip ended with me picking up a lot of other things.
- mysticllama 5y agoi really enjoy this motto, personally; especially since i have taken up the hobby of handtool woodworking for the last few years. i decided that i would invest time in learning to sharpen and maintain tools before i did much work with wood and for me that has paid huge dividends. working with keen tools vs. dull ones is night and day. but i was working on my own time : ) all that said, i completely agree with you that this is not a good motto for a novice at work -- if you are capable at handling an axe, having it razor sharp is going to markedly improve your results, but if it's your first go at swinging an axe, i really hope you don't spend 80% of your time fiddling with a sharpening stone…
- marcosdumay 5y agoThat's where the metaphor breaks down (while the intended idea stands perfectly fine), the reason you don't want to waste time making your axe perfectly sharp is that you must learn how to use it first, not because you should just forget about it and go chopping trees. It has some parallels to most skills, as most times you will only discover your deficiencies by doing it. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't train, it only means that training without ever practicing won't lead you anywhere.
- drjasonharrison 5y agoWell, taking a regular break to sharpen your axe, every half hour or after every tree, then you only spend a minute to save five minutes.[1] This is like running tests, or asking questions about what you have done recently to maintain focus on the bigger picture. Or to prevent a commit from getting too big. Or refactoring. And sharpening a dull axe can take an hour to half a day. [2] 1. http://rockymountainbushcraft.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-sharp-should-axe-be.html http://rockymountainbushcraft.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-sharp... 2. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/recreational_trails/publications/fs_publications/99232823/page15.cfm#sharp https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/recreational_trails/pub...
- kilobaud 5y agoSorry for the off-topic comment here but I cant help but tell you that your username reminds me of a user who posted on a couple gaming forums I used to frequent in the early 2000s.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoRemember who said it - Abraham Lincoln. He already knew how to use an axe.
- krallja 5y agoAn anonymous, possibly apocryphal, woodcutter. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/29/sharp-axe/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/29/sharp-axe/
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoI stand corrected.
- bcrosby95 5y agoWhy spend 5 hours cutting down a tree with an axe when I can spend weeks buying and learning to use a feller buncher incase I need to cutdown lots of trees in the future.