Sharpening My Axe

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. - Abraham Lincoln

The past few days I was working on a lab assignment for my compilers course. I was eager to start coding and so I flew through the corresponding lecture and went straight into the lab.

For one of the sections I spent almost a full day on it, only then realizing that the section was confusing because I didn’t properly understand the lecture.

I was chopping a tree with a dull axe.

These lab assignments are the most time consuming part of my degree. I’ve pulled off countless all nighters trying to solve both long and difficult programming labs. But now I realize that I spend way more time than is necessary. I still I got nearly 2 years left in my degree and these labs aren’t going anywhere.

But this time I’m going to sharpen my axe.