Dispel what I believe to be myths

This is not a straight forward myth and some hard work is good, however balance is important and some people work too hard without working smart, successful people usually get other people to do the hard work for them. Anyway I’d like to share a story with you which I heard on a management course:

There were two woodcutters who both thought they were the best so they had a competition to see who was better. They would both cut trees down for one day in the forest and whoever cut the most won. They were about 30 metres apart in the forest so they could hear but not see each other and they starting chopping at 9am. By 9.50 the 1st woodcutter could no longer hear the 2nd woodcutter so he thought to himself, wow he’s taking a break already and I’m not even slightly tired, I’ll keep going and get ahead of him, so he carried on chopping putting even more work into it and 10 minutes later he could hear the 2nd woodcutter chopping again. About 50 minutes later again the 1st woodcutter could hear the 2nd stop again and again he wasn’t tired so carried on, this continued with both of them stopping for lunch but otherwise the 1st woodcutter didn’t stop for the whole day. At the end he was sure he had won, after all the 2nd woodcutter had stopped for 10 minutes 8 times during the day and he hadn’t stopped once. When they counted up the trees though the 2nd woodcutter had cut down a few more. Puzzled the 1st woodcutter asked the 2nd “how did you cut down more than me, when I heard you stop every hour for 10 minutes?” and the 2nd woodcutter replied “yes I was sharpening my axe”

I life we all need to stop sometimes and sharpen our own axe, make sure we are well and in good condition so that we can work better not just more.

Now this is a topic that is quite close to me as I appear to care less than most men about some things, why you might ask, well its a defence mechanism I developed to make me seem masculine and to get me through life, showing pain doesn’t help it doesn’t get you good things it just makes people angry with you more. Take a child screaming in a supermarket does that make you like them more? On top of that we do actually care its just that we might not care as much as other people – Women for instance in the same way that a person with OCD could say that people don’t have clean homes – well yes they would be right compared to their obsessively cleaned house my house and most other peoples would be positively filthy but because we are in the majority we know that our place is (for the most part) clean enough. As for myself and other men not caring, well sometimes we just need a woman there to motivate us to care in the right way, just like women might need a man there sometimes to calm them down and be more objective and rational.

Ok this is a touchy subject and with my next entry in this myth thing it does seem like I’m women bashing. Research has shown various things regarding pain and pain thresholds, Women do during their lives experience more pain than men, but research has also shown that they are not as good as taking it without vocalising the fact that they have the pain ie screaming. Still I am sure there are women out there who can stand more pain than some men just as there are men out there (such as myself) who can stand more pain than some women.

I believe this to be a myth perpetuated initially by men who wanted to justify going out with perky young girls sometimes half their age, but then again it may have been perpetuated by grave robbing women who married old men for their money.

I’m not saying women aren’t mature, just they mature differently from men, some men never grow up in certain ways but that doesn’t mean they aren’t mature, just that they are men and naturally are different from women. Wome like the phrase that they mature quickly though as we all like to be complimented and believe good things about ourselves.