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Stephen Covey's final habit of highly effective people, Sharpen the Saw, is the culmination of the preceding six habits. Sharpening the saw is the key to continuous personal and professional improvement through self-renewal and self-examination.
Putting Stephen Covey's first six habits into practice can help us be more effective in our daily interactions. We can be proactive and focused on reaching meaning- ful goals through teamwork and relationships with others. But these efforts may result in burnout and stagnation if we don't combine them with the seventh, and final, habit: Sharpen the Saw.
Sharpening the saw is about self-renewal and enlarging both our capacity for action and our circle of influence. The metaphor contained within the habit's name is simple enough. Without ensur- ing that we continue to work on our skills, improve them, and keep them sharp, they will become dull and lose their effectiveness. It's critical that we realize the impor- tance of sharpening the saw and that we don't let the weeks and years go by without continuous self-renewal and self-examination.
Increase Production Capacity
Remember Aesop's fable of the goose that laid the golden eggs? In- stead of being patient and waiting for the goose to lay a golden egg every day, the farmer grew impa- tient and killed the goose, thinking he would strike it rich with a lump of gold in an instant. But the farmer was dismayed to discover there was no lump of gold, and, therefore, he would never get an- other golden egg. Essentially, the farmer didn't take care of the goose (which represents production ca- pacity), and the golden egg (the production) was eliminated. The moral? Covey says, "If you adopt a pattern of life that focuses on golden eggs and neglects the goose, you will soon be without the asset that produces golden eggs."
When he emphasizes the im- portance of sharpening the saw, Covey gives an example of a man feverishly trying to cut...