Sharpen the Saw: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People ends with sharpening the saw which entails building self-awareness and practicing all seven habits for self-improvement. Tune in as Traci and Rob consider what it means to be intentional about self-care in the four main areas: physical, spiritual, mental, and social-emotional.
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Announcer:
Welcome to the Overly Human Podcast, where we discuss all things human in the workplace. Because it's not just business—it's personal, too.
Traci:
I can't believe it, but we are on habit number seven, the final habit of highly effective people. This has been such a fun journey. To recap where we are:
Habit Two: Begin with the End in Mind
Habit Three: Put First Things First
Habit Five: Seek First to Understand, Then be Understood
Now, we're ending with habit seven: Sharpen the Saw, which is outside private and public victory. This is renewal. This is the habit, which it's my favorite habit to talk about because it's something we miss all the time and don't do, and really the reason why we haven't all become experts on the first six habits. But this habit is self-renewal, renewing ourselves, giving ourselves that pause and permission to care for our physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual well-being so that we can become great at the first six habits.
But it's so hard. Why is this one so hard?
Rob:
I think it's so hard because it takes intentionality and it's about the long haul, right? This is about sustainability of those other six habits. It's not the work that we're doing in the moment when we're trying to be intentional and we're trying to do that, it's the work in-between, right? Is how do we keep this going?
Traci:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rob:
That's the hardest part of any kind of change is making it permanent and finding ways to keep it going. And I think we see that in a lot of cases with diet culture and how come every January 1st everyone says that this is the year they're going to get fit, or this is the year they're going to do something, and it's the same thing again the next year, right? It's because they don't have systems in place to keep that moving, to get where they were trying to go. They haven't actually turned those things into habits.
Traci:
Yeah, and we don't realize we need to be so proactive in giving ourselves the space. I think one thing that's been fascinating post-pandemic and definitely post-lockdown when everybody had to take a break and everybody had space, that at least all the clients and friends that I interact with, there seems to be this renewal of, "What am I going to do with my life?" or innovation, or, "I want to do this. I want to do that," or even just feeling rested or rebalanced.
Even amidst a national crisis or a global crisis, we all were forced into this space, this pause, and many of us were shocked when we realized how little we had given ourselves over the last several decades of just, "Wow, maybe I've taken a vacation here or there. Maybe I've written in a journal a couple of times, but I've never given myself this amount of space."
What he's talking about is it's really hard to be the best version of yourself if you haven't taken care of yourself, if you haven't allowed yourself the physical reset, the spiritual reset, the mental reset, that how do you show up well? I know from an emotional intelligence standpoint, it's impossible. When your emotions are shot, when you are exhausted, when you're maxed out and you don't feel connected to anything solid, it's really hard to show up well in your spaces, your workspace, your home space, your relationships. It's just almost impossible.
Rob:
Yeah. This is the whole culture of busy thing, right?
Traci:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rob:
This is why the answer when somebody asks, "How have you been?" that the answer "busy" just drives me up a wall because we're all busy, we all fill our lives to capacity, and then think that that's a sustainable place and think that that's the norm. When really, it takes space to be able to do things sustainably. To be able to show up intentionally day after day, that takes time to be able to reflect and to be the best versions of ourselves for all the people who deserve that.
Traci:
Yeah, I feel like, too, busyness, don't we wear it like a badge of honor?
Rob:
Oh, we do.
Traci:
I think it's really gotten out of hand, so much so that I was talking to a friend this week who she has a part-time job, mom, and she actually was apologizing for not being busy and feeling down on herself that she wasn't busy enough or didn't feel like she was contributing enough. I thought that was really fascinating because I was like, "No, it sounds like you have a very balanced life." That busyness isn't the goal. It shouldn't be the goal, but when you reflect upon it and even hearing you just saying that, it's true, we wear it like a badge of honor, not realizing that it's not the best route to the best version of ourselves.
Rob:
Yeah, and to go one step further, right, a lot of times we use the word "rest" and our brains use the word "rest" as a substitute for "Oh, lazy. Oh, you didn't do anything?"
Traci:
Mm, yes.
Rob:
Like, "I had a Saturday."
The things that I've been reading and taking in are like, "No, no, no, maybe you had the Saturday you needed, the Saturday to reset, the Saturday just to give yourself a break because busy can't be the goal. It's not a destination." If we really get intentional about what we choose to spend our time with, it does provide a bearing for where we're going, and so many times, people look to just fill the time so they don't have to deal with themselves in the moments that they will just need to reflect and be alone.
Traci:
Yeah, and we don't see it as a priority. I think that everything that's on our work to-do list, or even on our family to-do list or house to-do list or whatever is the priority, and so we hardly ever, if ever, on our to-do list that we sketch out on a Monday morning, do we pencil in "exercise," do we pencil in "spiritual re-centering, meditation, journaling." If we do, it's at the bottom of the list. We're not going into our calendars and blocking out time for this as we should, and if we do, we don't feel terribly bad if we skip it and then we pay the price later. But I think if you can make it a habit, which he wants this to be a habit, then all of a sudden, you realize the benefit of it and you don't want to let it go.
I mean, the best quote for me in this whole chapter was when he quoted Martin Luther, the reformer, when he was talking about the spiritual renewal, and he says, "I have so much to do today. I'll need to spend another hour on my knees." That one hit me like a ton of bricks because I was like, "When you have so much to do, that's the last thing you think is, ‘oh, I'll spend another hour on renewal because I need that energy, I get all that power from my renewal, so I need to take even more time to renew before I jump in to all the things that I have to do.’ Instead, I'll say, 'Well, I have so much to do so I'm not going to do anything. I'm not going to exercise. I'm not going to eat well. I'm not going to pray for a long period of time. I'm not going to journal because I'm so busy with everything else that I have to do.'" He's flipping this on its head and saying, "No, you can't do those things well unless you are allotting the time you need to really refuel yourself and renew your mind," and I was like, "Ah, what a great reminder."
Rob:
Yeah. I think that's the trick is if you want to do anything sustainably over time, you have to have these moments where you are stopping to take care of yourself, otherwise you get in this constant mentality of, "I need a break. I need to get away. I need to escape the busy to take these." Humans don't work that way. We can't batch our renewal, our energy, our rest, our sharpening of the saw into one or two weeks a year because then we're constantly looking for that and by the time we get there, we're so exhausted that we can't possibly make any investment.
Traci:
Yeah.
Announcer:
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Rob:
The other thing that I so thought when I was reading this chapter again was, man, this sure sounds like all of the things we talk about with self-care so often today and that how this ambiguous word of self-care is, “Well, when are you taking the time for yourself?” and it's this selfish thing that people do and it's okay to be selfish. And I think that it's always been this word or phrase that means something different to everybody.
But I wonder if taking it from this perspective gives you some framework about how self-care should look is, how are you investing in your physical, your mental, spiritual, and emotional self in a way that you've got buckets that you need to fill up on a daily, weekly, continuous basis so that you can sustain and get to your end in mind, right? Because the way he talks about all this is you can't get to where you're going unless you're willing to take the time to invest in those quadrant two activities, right?
Traci:
Yeah. I like that there's four buckets for us to think about. I'm curious, too, from your point of view, so there's physical, spiritual, mental, and then the social-emotional. What area do you feel like you are best in, and then what area do you feel like, "Ooh, I'm not doing that as well," or, "I'd like to add to that," or that's a little bit more aspirational for you?
Rob:
Yeah, for me, I think the area I do best in is the physical part. Many years ago now after, oh, so we were running Sparkbox for five or six years. My health was pretty much a mess. I had stopped eating well, stopped sleeping well, stopped exercising almost completely just because I was very busy getting the business up and running and all those things and my health had just gotten to the point where it was very unsustainable and I had a big reset moment where I was like, "No, I'm actually going to get back on track," because up until that point, I'd always been a fairly healthy person in that, so I decided to do a lot of work on that and build those habits. That's been about seven years ago now, so I think I do well there. I lift weights four times a week, do yoga once a week, work out the other three days, sleep eight hours, think about what I eat. I think I've built enough habits there where even if I take a day off, I quickly get back on that horse pretty quickly. That's become my normal.
The rest of the three, I do pretty well on the mental. I try to read 20 minutes a day at least and have some input consistently overtime to keep learning, keep being curious. Obviously, writing and sharing is a part of what I do. Spiritual, definitely spend time both with my faith and making sure that I understand what I believe and why I believe it.
I think the one that I would probably say I have less of today than in the past is probably the social-emotional just because that's been something that's been a little bit harder in the last 18 months than it had been in the past. The connection with people on a regular basis, opportunity for service has changed dramatically with the pandemic, and things like that.
But for the most part, I'm a rut person, a very... Maybe "rut's" regimented. I always say, "The difference between a rut and a groove is just perspective." I love my, "I do this at this time and this at this time," and everything's on my calendar, so it all happens. All my self-care or sharpening the saw happens on a regular basis. But I think that I've realized that if I don't stop and do those things for myself that I'm not going to be any good to help the people that need it.
How about you, Traci?
Traci:
Oh, that was good to hear. Yeah, I think for me, mental, I think the same area that you are with that. When you're running a business and you're coaching people and you're doing a podcast and all that, I'm reading, I'm writing, so that sharpening my mental insights, I feel like that probably ranks pretty high in that self-renewal, although I guess you can call that "work" as well, so maybe that's not completely fair.
But spiritual, I feel like I'm always praying. That's one. When I used to drive downtown to work, that was my time to every morning would just pray all the way to work, and I miss that time. I don't feel like I have blocked that off as much to meditate on anything or to journal, and so even when I'm saying it out loud right now, I think, "Ooh, that would be nice to get into a new groove with that because I don't have that space and time in the car anymore to do that at home."
I'd say the one thing that has slipped from me is the physical. Yeah, I think that being a working mom and being responsible for so many things, especially non-driving teenagers right now, I feel like all I do is go from desk to car, desk to car. And I really need to carve that time out for myself because when I do it, oh, my gosh, my days are so different. They're just so different. The endorphins that you get, feeling just happy with yourself that you've moved your body, and the way that takes the stress, the stress reduction aspect of physical activity is incredible, and I think I can feel my stress build, and I know it's because I haven't moved my body. I know I would be able to handle the stress so much better had I just taken that 45-minute walk in the morning with the dog that I love to do. When I skip that, I pay the price, I pay the price mentally, obviously, physically as well, but way, way into my mental capacity to handle stress.
Then I think the social-emotional, one thing that he sort of stretched my mind on when I reread that part was how he was positioning social. Because I'm a social person, I'm more of an extrovert than an introvert, even though I have my moments, and I love, love being around people and love talking to people and that I feel like I really go out and search for and try to make sure I'm having interactions with my girlfriends or other couples or whatever, but he positioned it as practicing the habits of think win-win and seek first to understand and then be understood and synergize as part of your social.
I was like, "Huh." I don't know if I approach my social interactions with that intent. I'm going to go into this Friday night going out with the girls and I'm going to do nothing, but seek first to understand and I was like, "That's a new way. I should look at my social interaction as more intentional as opposed to just blowing off steam." That's all important, too, but using this framework or using that social time to practice these habits, I was like, "Okay, that I can add into my self-renewal." That's a new one that I'm going to try to deepen those relationships in a way where I'm really getting something fresh and new out of every encounter I have with my friends, even despite how long I've known them, that doesn't matter. But my goal is to learn something new or see them in a new way every time I interact with them, and if that's my goal, I'm going to show up very differently in those conversations and those interactions.
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Rob:
Hmm. That's a pretty interesting perspective. I read that, too, and I kind of breezed over that and didn't really consider what that looks like for friend groups outside, other kinds of adult relationships, right?
Traci:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rob:
That's definitely interesting, but I like that perspective a lot is as humans, we're all in this together, and those people need good inputs and to be affirmed and understood just as much as all the people that we work with, and our spouses, our families and all of that. So I kind of like that idea of... I mean, it's the whole thing of holding each other up in a lot of ways.
Traci:
Yeah, I mean this whole, just any sort of really thought-provoking book that we jump into is a whole lesson in self-awareness. One of the reasons why I like to ask the question of, "Where are you showing up well and where are there room for improvement?" is because that is the first step in self-awareness is we don't have everything figured out and we have to examine how we're showing up and where our blind spots might be or where is there room to improve or what can we look at differently?
And I do think that this has been a lovely journey through these seven habits of… All of it's a reminder. There's nothing new under the sun. These aren't revolutionary habits or topics, but man, do we need to be reminded of them often? I think this whole concept of self-renewal is like, if you don't take the time out to even pull out this list, then they're never going to become habits. They're just never going to become habits and we're never going to get really good at them. They're instead going to be just nice thoughts that we read once, and we have to commit, but we need the space to commit.
And so it's really been a nice reminder and a challenge. I want to challenge myself. I want to challenge my clients. I want to challenge my family to think about some of these concepts and then how can I hold myself accountable to living these out and becoming good at them?
Rob:
Yeah. I think that one of the things that, at least I don't remember reading it in this chapter that stood out to me as something that I would add is sleep. And I realize that's part of physical, but I actually think that's part of the mental, spiritual and social part of it too is you can't do any of this stuff unless as a human you are well-rested. You won't show up intentionally, you won't be able to exercise, you won't be able to be intentional with your life unless you prioritize sleep and being rested. And I think that's one of the single most important things that we can do—and I know it's one of the single most important things for me personally, if I'm sleeping well and getting my eight-plus hours of sleep, then the rest of life seems a whole lot easier.
Traci:
Yeah. That's the other thing that we get tripped up on with the whole busyness is I had a client the other day say, "Oh, well, I'll sleep when I'm dead," and I'm like, "Well, no, you'll be dead because you don't sleep." So you really need to not have that perspective that you're going to miss out or not get it all done or, "I can live on four hours of sleep. I know I can. That's just who I am." No, it's not who you are. We need sleep and we know we don't show up as well. We know our patience is thin. We snap at people. We don't think as clearly, we're not as creative, we feel our stress more deeply.
Rest is so important. It's just really hard for us to do and it's hard for us to do well because we're not shutting down the devices an hour before we go to bed, we're not clearing our minds. We're not sleeping in dark, cold rooms. There's a process. There's a way to optimize our rest. I think if we make it a priority and we think about how do we enter into rest and how do we come out of rest, I think that's a fun little exercise to do to really optimize our physical being. This one body that we have, this is it.
Rob:
Are you a schedule person, Traci?
Traci:
Hmm. Well, I have the calendar and everything's blocked out in it, so I guess pretty much so. I think my work forces me to be pretty scheduled. I'm seeing clients by the hour and that type of thing. But I'm also a very fluid person. A last-minute lunch is like, "Ooh, yes. let's do that," or a, "Let's hop out of town this weekend, even though we didn't plan it," so there's a lot of spontaneity, I think, that I prefer.
I'd say my husband is much more of a planner, much more structured, and I probably drive him a little bit crazy in that regard where I'm like, "Really, you want to talk about that now? Can't we talk about that later? Can we plan that later?"
How about you?
Rob:
Yeah, I'm pretty religious when it comes to my calendar. The thing that I notice is I have habits and routines that I expect to go a certain way, and if they don't, it really bothers me, and I have to fight that urge to become upset because I find comfort in the knowing what is going to happen.
It's simple. It's little stuff like a couple years ago, I remember being in the car with my business partner, Ben, and we were leaving one place, going to a second place to get coffee after a workout. And we always go to the same coffee place, and it's the same two or three turns. And he decided to go to a new coffee place without telling me and took the turn away from the way I knew we were going. And I felt this anxiety come over me just a little bit, like, "Wait, we're not going to where always go? What is going on? Why are we not going to that place?" That's how acute it is in some places, and it drives, I think, my wife nuts sometimes because I'm okay being flexible if I know about it.
Traci:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). That's interesting.
Rob:
It is. It's one of those things where I know what I'm going to do, and once I start with my intention for the day, things that disrupt that bother me. For example, there are some times that my wife will want me to run out and pick something up for her in the morning for breakfast or whatever. And it really bothers me if she asks me in the morning, but if she lets me know the night before, where I can plan that into my day and fall asleep and wake up with that intention, I'm good with it.
It's odd how it works, but I'm pretty regimented when it comes to most everything. Everything's on my calendar. If it's not on my calendar, I usually don't do it, and if it's on there, it definitely gets done.
Traci:
Yeah. I would say you and my husband are probably pretty similar with that and maybe your wife Laura and I are more similar, and that's probably why they say opposites attract and we balance each other out.
It's just a different way of approaching things and I think it probably means you're in the perfect role in your job. Definitely, having an operational role, and the reason why Sparkbox is a well-oiled machine, is that discipline. It's key. You know what to do and what to delegate and to protect your time and your calendar and it's good. I'd say maybe you probably would have an easier time executing this habit than someone like me who's probably not as protective of my calendar that I need to be. So I probably need to start there. I need to start with a commitment to the calendar and then scheduling these things in and not letting life or someone take them away from me.
Rob:
Yeah. And I think if we're talking about building habits, there's lots of ways to do that in small ways, right?
Traci:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rob:
It doesn't have to be this giant, life-changing thing to get started because habits, like everything else, has inertia and it gets momentum over time, right? One of the things that like someone suggested is, "Hey, just find five minutes a day to read. Just five minutes. You can find five minutes. You can do it right before you go to bed or whatever. First thing in the morning or whatever it's going to be.” And next thing you know, that five minutes can become 10, can become to 20, become whatever you're trying to build up to.
My weightlifting coach says that he often tells a lot of his clients when they're starting a new exercise program is, “Just get in the habit of laying out your clothes the night before. Even if you don't necessarily go work out, lay out your clothes. Get in that habit of seeing them and getting used to that idea, and chances are when you wake up and see them laid out, you'll put them on." So start with that part of the habit, right?
Traci:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rob:
That reminder, putting yourself in a situation where you won't just forget and fall into the ruts that you've developed over time.
Traci:
Yeah. Or that journal by your bed. Keep the journal out. Don't put it away, keep it out, and then just write a few sentences before you go to bed. Empty your mind so that you can sleep well, that's another great habit that I try to adhere to.
Rob:
Yeah. Do you have a bedtime, Traci?
Traci:
I do have a bedtime. I usually am in bed by 10:00 and probably to bed by 10:30. That's my aspiration every day.
Rob:
Yeah, that's what mine is, too. I like to go upstairs about 10:00 and be asleep by 10:30.
Traci:
Yep. It's good. I mean, you have to pick that time.
Just on the spiritual side, this will be the last little story I tell, but I have a really good friend and her grandmother would get on her knees every single night, every single night to pray, just that old-fashioned, "I'm going to get on my knees." And she lived till she was close to 90 years old and they found her in her room. She died on her knees praying. I just love that story because, one, of the discipline and the commitment to her spiritual well-being, so much so, I mean, I was thinking, "Is there a better way to die than to just be on your knees praying, doing that spiritual centering that she was so committed to?" It was just her time.
And I think to be that committed to your own self-renewal is a beautiful thing and that's my takeaway from this chapter is I really want to become committed to self-renewal as a disciplined habit in my life.
Rob:
Yeah. I think my takeaway this week was to look at self-renewal, sharpening the saw, self-care, as a sustainable practice for self-investment, right, is how do we do the regular maintenance on our lives so that this vessel, vehicle, temple that we're in can go the distance and get to where we want to be, where we set our attention to be. That's the goal. It's not to just fill our lives with things that exist, to make sure that we have plenty of things to do, but that we are doing the things that will sustain us long-term.
Traci:
Yes, that we're living as opposed to being lived. Just go forth and intentionally do it.
Rob:
Do it.
Traci:
This has been great. I've loved this little journey through these habits with you.
Rob:
Yeah, this has been fun. Thanks, Traci.
Traci:
Thanks. Thank you.
Announcer:
The Overly Human podcast is brought to you by Navigate the Journey and Sparkbox. For more information on this podcast, or to get in touch with Traci or Rob, go to overlyhuman.com. If you like what you've heard, subscribe and tell your friends to listen. Thanks.
