Sharpen the Saw
By Ryan Gray
I’ve been thinking a lot about how tired everyone looks in December.
Not the “I stayed up too late binging a show” tired. The kind of tired that sits in your shoulders, that makes you stare at your inbox for a full minute before you remember what you were about to do. The kind of tired that hits right when the calendar is screaming: finals, holiday events, family logistics, year-end reports, budget planning, admissions season ramping up… and for our crowd, a whole lot of “can we get this AV upgrade in before spring term?”
And then we tell ourselves, “I’ll rest after this next push.”
The December HETMA theme is Productive Rest, and I love that phrase because it pushes back on two unhelpful extremes: “go until you collapse” on one side, and “rest is doing nothing” on the other. Productive rest isn’t laziness dressed up with a nice name. It’s maintenance. It’s sharpening the tool you use to do the work.
Which is exactly where Stephen Covey’s Habit 7 comes in: Sharpen the Saw.
It pushes back on two unhelpful extremes: “go until you collapse” on one side, and “rest is doing nothing” on the other
The myth of the heroic dull blade
Covey tells a story about a person furiously sawing away at a tree with a dull blade. When someone suggests they stop and sharpen the saw, the answer is: “I don’t have time to sharpen the saw—I’m too busy sawing.” You don’t have to be into self-help books to see yourself in that.
Higher ed AV/IT is full of heroic dull blades.
We pride ourselves on being the ones who get it done: last-minute classroom saves, surprise events, “can you just…” requests that somehow become 40-hour projects. We’ll climb a lift, chase a network loop, rebuild a lecture capture workflow, and then answer a Teams chat at 10:30 p.m. because “it’s easier if I just respond real quick.”
Until suddenly it isn’t.
Habit 7 is Covey’s way of saying: your effectiveness over time depends on your willingness to invest in your own renewal. He breaks it into four dimensions: physical, mental, social/emotional, and spiritual (or purpose/meaning, if that word fits you better). Productive rest lives right in the middle of those four.
So let’s borrow that framework and translate it into something that makes sense for our world.
1. Physical: Your body is not an accessory to your job
We are very good at planning maintenance windows for systems and very bad at planning maintenance windows for ourselves.
We are very good at planning maintenance windows for systems and very bad at planning maintenance windows for ourselves.
Physical “sharpening the saw” isn’t just about exercise. It’s the basics: sleep, hydration, food that isn’t conference donuts, actually standing up from your chair more than twice a day. It’s noticing that back pain that’s been “just part of the job” for three years and admitting maybe that’s not normal.
Productive rest at the physical level might look like:
- Protecting one night a week in December as non-negotiable sleep priority—no late-night laptop time, no “I’ll just finish this deck real quick.”
- Taking a real lunch break away from your desk, even if it’s 20 minutes in the hallway outside your help desk.
- Using winter break to reset one small habit: a short walk after dinner, stretching before bed, scheduling that overdue appointment.
None of this will look impressive in a strategic plan. But if your body keeps the lights on for all the big ideas you care about, pretending it’s optional is just bad operations.
2. Mental: Not every problem needs your brain at 110%
Mental sharpness in our world often gets framed as “staying on top of everything”: email, standards, emerging tech, security bulletins, policy changes, another LMS update, AI tools, new compliance requirements. If you’re not careful, the entire job becomes consumption and reaction.
Habit 7 pushes us toward intentional mental renewal—things that stretch or soothe your mind instead of just occupying it.
Productive rest on the mental side might look like:
- Blocking an hour during the quieter days of winter break to read something because it interests you, not because it’s in a project plan.
- Giving yourself permission to have a day where you don’t solve anything big—just routine tickets, light cleanup, easy wins.
- Capturing ideas in a notebook or OneNote during the rush, then revisiting them in January when your brain isn’t in emergency mode.
This isn’t about becoming less ambitious. It’s about not asking your brain to run at “incident response” frequency 12 months a year.
3. Social/Emotional: Rest is also about who you’re around
Here’s the part a lot of us skip: the relationships we keep are part of our rest strategy.
When Covey talks about social/emotional renewal, he’s pointing at connection, trust, and the emotional bank account—those deposits and withdrawals we make with other people. In our space, that looks like your team, your campus partners, your HETMA community, your family, your friends.
If every conversation you have is problem-focused and task-driven, you start to forget you’re a person and not just a ticket router.
Productive rest here might look like:
- Grabbing coffee with a colleague and explicitly not talking about work for the first ten minutes.
- Saying yes to a low-key social thing with people who energize you, not just the events you feel obligated to attend.
- Letting someone support you for once—sharing honestly that this term has been heavy, instead of defaulting to “yeah, busy but good.”
The point isn’t to become the campus extrovert. It’s to recognize that being emotionally alone in your role is exhausting, and connection is part of how we refill the tank.
4. Spiritual/Purpose: Why are you doing any of this?
spiritual dimension is about meaning—your “why,” your values
You don’t have to be religious for this category to matter.
Covey’s spiritual dimension is about meaning—your “why,” your values, the sense that what you’re doing connects to something bigger than a to-do list. When that connection frays, even a reasonable workload feels draining.
In higher ed AV/IT, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that behind every HDMI issue is a student trying to learn, a faculty member trying something new, a staff member trying to serve. That’s not just a nice story; it’s the actual point.
Productive rest at this level might look like:
- Taking a quiet hour in December to reflect on the year: Where did your work make a difference? Where did you feel most aligned with your values?
- Reconnecting with the student or faculty stories that remind you why you got into this field in the first place.
- Letting yourself imagine a bit: what would a more sustainable, humane version of your role look like next year?
This isn’t day-dreaming as avoidance. It’s sharpening the part of you that cares, so the work doesn’t become hollow.
Productive rest is a system, not a snow day
If you’re like me, the temptation is to read all this and think, “Cool, I’ll fix my life over winter break.”
That’s just another version of the dull saw story.
Productive rest isn’t a single dramatic pause; it’s a rhythm. It’s pathways you build into your week, your month, your year that say: I’m going to treat myself like an asset worth maintaining, not a consumable resource.
So instead of planning a full life overhaul, consider something smaller and more honest for December:
- One thing physical you’ll protect (sleep, movement, time off-screen).
- One thing mental you’ll choose (a book, a thinking day, a no-crisis day).
- One thing social/emotional you’ll lean into (a conversation, a boundary, asking for help).
- One thing purpose-related you’ll revisit (a value, a story, a goal).
Write them down. Tell somebody. Put them on your calendar like you would a vendor meeting.
Because here’s the quiet truth underneath Habit 7: no one is coming to build that sharpening time into your schedule for you. Your institution will gladly accept every ounce of energy you give it. Your inbox will always refill. The project list will never hit zero.
So “Productive Rest” becomes an act of leadership—starting with yourself.
Not “I’ll rest when this is all over,” but “I’m going to sharpen the saw so I can keep showing up for the work that matters, the people who matter, and the community I’m a part of.”
And if you needed permission to do that this December, consider this it.
