Back To Work with a Sharpened Axe!

It's lunch time on my first day back to work after holidays and time for a quick blog post. I have also not being posting very much during the holidays, so hopefully this will mark my return to regular blogging. The great thing about being a Lecturer is that we get longer holidays than most people. In my previous job with SmartForce we got a standard 22 days off per year, currently I get 31 days per year. Some Lecturers in the IoTs get even longer! Do we deserve this? Perhaps a topic for discussion before the end of the summer?



I have just spent the entire morning going through 5 week's of emails - there were over 800 to check through. Most were the various subscriptions that I simply deleted after a quick glance at the subject header. Most others were for news and events which have already passed by the time I read about them today. In the end there were only a few dozen that needed to be read and answered. College is fairly quiet anyway over the summer, so there was not too much to deal with.

The late Dr Steven Covey wrote about The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. His 7th habit is called "Sharpen the Saw" which he described as meaning "preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have--you. It means having a balanced program for self-renewal in the four areas of your life: physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual". One simple interpretation of this is that people take their holidays to recharge their batteries. Many people claim to be too busy to sharpen their saws, but it is vital do do so so that you can remain effective and productive. You can read about Covey's Sharpen the Saw story here.

My Axe being sharpened! Image source: AxeSpecialists.com.