Sharpening the Saw

I took a weeklong cruise once -- LOVED IT -- and clearly remember talking to one of the "boat hosts" about how people change over the course of the trip.

On Day 1 of the cruise, people are itchy to check their emails, their blackberries, their "messages"... and the "news" from the world back home as well. They think about their jobs, their problems, and all sorts of day-in and day-out stuff like that.

By Day 3 they are doing the Macarena and talking about how Vanilla Ice wasn't really such a bad musical artist after all.

It's called vacation and while right now I am still knee deep in thinking about my students, the work coming up in January, the new projects I am going to try, the practices we are going to share as a department in order to improve our school-wide performance, and on and on. But by Wednesday of next week, don't be surprised if you hear me talking about how intellectually stimulating I find the tv show The View and my new addiction to TMZ.com.

Stephen Covey calls it "Sharpening the Saw".

And who doesn't need it right about now?