How to work without burnout? Story of a two Lumberjacks

Tanosei
2 min readSep 8, 2021

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There once lived two strong lumberjacks Jack and Tom. They both lived in small cabins not too far apart from one another and they both loved the same thing — to harvest oaks and pines of the wild forest.

Every morning they both used to start their work at 9 am and end their work at 5 pm. No doubt they both were strong and hardworking.

Jack always thought he was the hardworking ones on comparison to Tom since Jack used to work longer than Tom, he also reported that Tom was lazy and used to disappear for about an hour in the middle of the day.

Jack always chopped around 10–12 tress a day, which made him feel proud and powerful. While Jack always believed that Tom was lazy and he might have chopped just 5–6 trees hardly. And this continued for months.

Once Jack was passing by Tom’s shack, where he was astonished to see 18 tress in front of Tom’s shack. Pondering whether Tom has some magical axe. He rushes to talk to Tom.

He asked politely “Tom I don’t understand every day we start at the same time, everyday we stop at the same time and everyday you disappear for about an hour in the middle of the day, how could you chop more wood than me?” “Where do you go for an hour, it there any wizard?”

Tom smiling replies, “Well Jack, I go home eat, rest and sharpen my axe everyday”.

We know that if we take an infinite mindset it’s not about how much we can get done each day. It’s how much we can get done over the course of a career or over the course of the lifetime. So don’t try do everything at a single day.

Sharpen your axe [mind] every day by taking a healthy breaks. Taking breaks also doesn’t mean you will be switching to other task. Rather, enable your Critical Thinking. You’ll be able to connect the dots.

Studies also have found that breaks can reduce or prevent stress, help to maintain performance throughout the day and reduce the need for a long recovery at the end of the day

How do you take breaks? What do you do on breaks? Drop down your thoughts.

I usually sit back and have a Critical thinking. I don’t feed my brain with more information while they lead to information overload. And, How to Think Critically? I suggest you a book [100 Mental Models]

Thanks for reading. I hope it was worth your time. Leave a “CLAP” if you liked the content and “Follow” for regular personal growth Stories.

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Tanosei
Tanosei

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