磨刀不误砍柴功

I forgot when, but I recently read an interesting article, or post, on the Chinese Newspaper. The title of the post is of course the heading of THIS post. I'm not going to dilly-dally so I'm going straight to the story. There are two woodcutters, let's just call them A and B respectively. They decided to have a competition between each other to see who could cut the most amount of wood. Woodcutter A, without thinking nor hesitating, went up to the hill and cut down any tree his eyes met. Woodcutter B just rested for the day.

On the first day of competition, Woodcutter A did managed to cut twice as much wood as Woodcutter B. However, no matter how hard he worked for the next few days, he still cut much lesser wood than Woodcutter B. How on earth did this happen? Haha! Woodcutter A's axe was already badly blunt as each day passed, and hence he had to use more strength to cut down each tree. Woodcutter B was a clever guy, no worries. While he wasn't cutting down trees, he would spend time sharpening his axe, and he also looked for trees which were easier to cut down. He used little effort to gain a huge amount of wood. In the end, of course, Woodcutter B was the winner.

The story was trying to teach us a very basic principle of life : Work Smart, not Work Hard. Someone may be the most hardworking person on the planet, but why is it that others have accomplished things which he haven't? That is because they think of easier ways to solve problems, while the hardworking one just works hard and deals with challenges without thinking. That is how the proverb "磨刀不误砍柴功"came about!

"努力是一般蛮力，聪明的策划与适当的准备工作绝对比傻傻地用力来的有成绩。"