How efficiency secretly destroys growth.

“If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe.” – Abraham Lincoln.

This is garbage advice for most people. Also, it’s likely that Lincoln never said this nonsense either.

The underlying framework here is to “make sure everything is perfect and then start,” and we all know that things are never perfect or feel like the right time. It’s the same reason why people start that book, or their diet, etc.

Starting stuff just needs to happen – even without knowing precisely what to do, or knowing the most efficient way to do something. If you subscribe to this sharpen the axe philosophy, it’s a slippery slope and then you’re met with the next destructive piece of advice which is,

“Work smart, not hard.” – Random guru.

Which slips you into more garbage which is, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”

It’s all very dangerous pieces of advice, because they are slightly true, but these are the exact horrific mentalities that make people say, “I’ll start tomorrow. I need to research a little more.”

The idea of being efficient, doing something well, or working smart are all just lines of BS that keeps people from starting. In their defense, these are better ideas later on, but not initially.

“Whether advice is good or not depends on where you are in your journey.” – Truth Cake

Good advice for getting started is to simply get started, and good advice for getting better is all the typical guru quotes I’ve listed above.

“If I was given only an hour to chop down a tree, I’d chop the tree for 15 minutes and determine how much, if any at all, sharpening was needed if I hadn’t already chopped the tree down in 15 minutes.” – Truth Cake

How have “good” pieces of advice slipped into your mind and actually held you back from starting?