One of the hardest things for me personally to do is PAUSE. Pause and assess. Pause and learn. Pause and reflect.

I like action.

Honestly I’m prone to working harder wasting effort to just DO something over slowing down to learn and assess.

But the secret to the best results in as short a time as possible isn't hard work...

It's efficiency of work.

And efficiency comes from constantly learning, constantly honing your skills. Constantly perfecting your tools and building your resources.

It doesn't come from simply trying to do more.

Because too often when we try to just do more and work harder, we don't find the best way to do something.

And we end up wasting a ton of effort.

A perfect example of this is the tale of two woodcutters.

Woodcutter A cuts wood all day, never pausing to rest.

Woodcutter B, on the other hand, at times throughout the day stops and sits down.

At the end of the day, Woodcutter B has cut 3 times more wood than Woodcutter A.

Woodcutter A incredulously asks, "How the heck have you cut so much more wood than me? You rested far more!"

Woodcutter B says, "I wasn't resting, I was sharpening my saw."

All too often we don't want to take that step back to improve.

We don't want to regress to progress.

We don't want to slow down and learn something new.

It feels like we're wasting time. Or slowing our momentum. Or taking a "break."

But often that step back can lead to a huge leap forward.

Stop trying to rush results by just working harder.

Be willing to pause and sharpen your skills (hehe) and build your resources and knowledge to be more productive.

It will save you a ton of time, wasted effort and ultimately help you move forward faster in the end!

So how can you get yourself to pause at times and do the learning that is necessary to stop working harder and instead learn to be more efficient?