A villager sees a wood-cutter working hard in a jungle trying to cut a huge tree with his axe. The villagers asks him “How long have you been doing this, you look really tired.”. Wood-cutter replies “It has been 5 hours I am working to cut this tree. This is really a tough job.”

“Why don’t you take a break and sharpen your axe” exclaims the villager. “No. No. I don’t have time to sharpen the axe.” The wood cutter says empathetically. “I am busy axing.” Time passes and it started getting dark. The wood cutter finally completes his job for the day and returns home to come again next day.

While he is returning home he thinks about what the villager had told him. He goes home and sharpens his axe for the next day even though he was very tired. The next day when he starts working on the tree, he finishes cutting it in little time and with very less effort than the day before.

Here the Axe symbolises your skill set and abilities. In our daily life we get so busy with work and studies that we can hardly recognize that we have to polish our abilities and skills to perform better. We are so busy with work that taking out time for other activities seem impossible or waste of time.

But as the story suggests, we should take out some time to learn new skills and techniques that would help us perform better at work and studies. We should spend time in learning new concentration techniques, memorization techniques, self-study techniques etc. which will help us study efficiently. We should not only learn them but also take out time in our daily routine to practice them. Practice meditation, yoga and/or exercise which will relieve our day-to-day stress and keep us motivated and energetic.  All this would improve the performance level of our mind and body and we would feel more accomplished. We would complete our work in less time and utilize remaining time for rejuvenation.