Sharpen the Axe: Why Pushing Harder Isn't Always the Answer

It goes like this:

Two woodsmen are tasked with cutting wood for the town. They both start at the same time. They both finish at the same time. Same hours, same goal, same job.

But throughout the day, one of them keeps taking breaks. Long ones. Several of them. The other goes straight through — head down, axe swinging, barely stopping to drink water.

At the end of the day, they count the wood.

The one who took all the breaks cut significantly more.

The one who worked straight through is baffled. A little annoyed, honestly. He walks over and asks — how? How did you cut more wood when you were barely working?

The other one looks at him and says, simply: "I was sharpening my axe."

The Tool That Makes the Work Possible

That answer lands differently depending on where someone is in their journey.

For some clients, it's an immediate recognition — oh, that's what I've been missing. For others, there's resistance. A sense that resting still feels like giving up. That slowing down means falling behind.

But here's the thing. The woodsman who went straight through wasn't lazy for skipping the sharpening — he was just focused on the wrong thing. He was measuring effort instead of output. Time in instead of results out.

And at some point, a dull axe takes more energy and does less work. No amount of extra effort changes that equation. You can swing harder — and still cut less wood.

Where I See This in Practice

This pattern shows up constantly in the context of training, pain management, and recovery.

Someone is working hard. They're consistent. They're putting in the time. But they're not sleeping well, they're skipping the recovery work, they're pushing through fatigue rather than addressing it. And the results — in terms of how they feel, how they move, how their system responds — aren't matching the effort they're putting in.

The instinct is to push harder. More sessions. More intensity. More “fixes”. More discipline.

But if the system is depleted, the effort doesn't convert the way you'd expect. You're swinging a dull axe. And swinging harder with a dull axe just wears you out faster.

What's actually needed — even though it feels counterintuitive — is to stop and sharpen.

What Sharpening Actually Looks Like

This is where it gets practical.

Sharpening isn't one thing. It looks different depending on the person and what they're working on. But broadly, it includes the things that most people treat as optional extras — the things that get dropped first when life gets busy.

Sleep is probably the biggest one. The nervous system does a significant amount of its repair and regulation work during sleep. Cutting it short consistently is like taking a file to the blade every night and wondering why the axe keeps getting duller.

Recovery between sessions — whether that's active recovery, rest, or simply not training at maximum intensity every day — matters more than most people want it to. The adaptation doesn't happen during the hard session. It happens in the space after it.

Nervous system regulation work — breathwork, somatic practices, time to decompress — helps the system come down out of a high-alert state so it can actually process and recover. A nervous system that's stuck in overdrive can't restore efficiently, no matter how much rest you try to give it.

None of these are passive. They're all incredibly important parts of the work. They're just a different kind of work than the obvious kind.

The Reframe That Changes Things

One of the most useful shifts I see in clients is when they stop thinking of recovery as a reward for effort — something they earn when they've done enough — and start treating it as a requirement for the effort to mean anything.

You don't sharpen the axe after all the wood is cut. You sharpen it so you can cut the wood effectively.

The rest isn't the break from the work. The rest is part of the work.

"You can't expect full output from a depleted system."

This applies whether you're training for performance, managing chronic pain, working through fatigue, or just trying to keep up with the demands of daily life. The principle is the same. If the tool is dull, the results will reflect that — no matter how much effort goes in.

A Question Worth Sitting With

If you've been pushing hard without seeing the results you'd expect — or if you've been feeling like something's off but you can't quite identify what — it might be worth asking yourself honestly:

When's the last time I sharpened the axe?

Not as a criticism. Just as a genuine question.

Because sometimes the most productive thing you can do is put the axe down for a bit, find the file, and take care of the tool.

The wood will still be there. And you'll cut a lot more of it.