Sharpening the Axe, or Just Wasting Time? When Preparation Becomes Procrastination

I still remember the moment I read the article. It was a quiet Tuesday morning, the coffee hadn’t quite kicked in, and I found myself half-scrolling while waiting for a build to finish. The author pulled out Abraham Lincoln’s old line—“Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Right away, they argued that in software engineering, sharpening your axe means mastering your CS fundamentals. That framing instantly grabbed me. We all love a good quote, but this one keeps popping up everywhere, and each time, someone claims they’ve finally cracked what it means.

My first thought? They missed the point. I’ve spent way too many hours obsessing over my tools or environment, convinced I’d be unstoppable if I could just find the “right” setup before actually doing any work. If you’re building software or wrangling ML models, you know exactly what I mean—the tension between prepping your stack and actually shipping something. It always feels like there’s friction, whether it’s installing the perfect linter, choosing a new framework, or designing that magical pipeline up front.

But the beauty of a great quote lies in its layers. I started out certain, but the more I dug in, the more I realized Lincoln wasn’t just talking about tools, or even preparation for its own sake. Maybe there’s a reason so many smart builders interpret it differently. That’s worth exploring, because our instincts—especially the ones we barely notice—have real costs.

Here’s how I see it. Preparation is only leverage when you refuse to cross the line where preparation becomes procrastination, because it must actually amplify your next cycle. Otherwise, we’re just procrastinating with extra steps. The decision isn’t about being ready. It’s about whether what you do now makes what comes next measurably better.

When to Sharpen, When to Ship: The Leverage Test

Let’s get honest about the two classic failure modes. On one hand, there’s the productivity theater. Tweaking setup scripts, building out abstractions, perfecting templates for hours, convinced that your “stack” isn’t quite right yet. I’ve caught myself doing this far too often. Polishing documentation or automating a deploy before even writing a line of core logic. Is this preparation, or just stalling out? Lincoln said four hours sharpening; I can’t help but ask if maybe Abe was just kicking the can down the road. Four hours sharpening an axe? Sounds more like productivity theater if the tree isn’t even picked out yet.

The momentum trap is the opposite: you dive into coding or model design right away, barely glancing at requirements, pushing half-finished features just to say something moved. You end up doubling back, sometimes spending two days fixing a bug you could’ve avoided by pausing to check your assumptions. The telltale signs? Theater feels busy but never urgent. Momentum looks fast but falls apart on contact with reality. I keep making both mistakes, especially when the pressure is on. If you’ve ever built the perfect infra only to realize you don’t need half of it, you’re in good company.

So what’s the move? Only sharpen if it’s clear you’ll multiply results in the next cycle. Prep that improves documentation can lift team performance by 25% in the next cycle. A real boost, not just theater (State of DevOps). Hear that in context. It’s only leverage if it makes iteration faster right now, not someday. I used to just assume “more prep = better results,” but the more projects I cycle through, the more I’ve learned to ask this before I open a new tab.

Here’s the simplest way I can put it. Preparation is a multiplier, not a merit badge. If you sharpen the axe and the tree falls twice as fast, do it. If you polish tools but never use them, you’re just collecting gold stars. Think of it like prepping a meal. Dicing onions ahead of time speeds dinner, but making a dozen sauces you’ll never use is just busywork. The same logic runs true in ML, product, or dev work. Setup helps only when execution gets faster.

To turn this into action, run a three-part test: intent (are you solving for a known obstacle right now?), timing (does the benefit apply to this immediate cycle?), and expected ROI (will the time spent pay off quickly?). Before your next decision—maybe even today—pause and check. Does sharpening multiply your next effort, or just slow you down?

All these angles help us see that it’s not about more prep or faster shipping. It’s about making each cycle count. There’s room for debate, and that’s what keeps the conversation alive.

Five Lenses for Sharpening (and Shipping)

When I first read that CS-fundamentals article, I caught myself itching to defend my own interpretation—almost instinctively. I’d spent years building habits around “sharpening” before working. Prepping environments, cleaning up repos, re-reading old notes. But, with a little distance, curiosity got the better of me. Instead of getting stuck in rebuttal mode, I started collecting other takes. The more perspectives I added, the more interesting it got. Each lens seemed to give you a different signal about when it’s actually worth stopping to prep. I mapped out five of them—each practical, each a way to choose action when it matters.

Let’s start serious. Sometimes, mastery really does matter. If the next sprint depends on fundamentals that’ll stack up—say, you’re about to refactor an API you’ll touch for months—the time to sharpen is now. In these cycles, getting the right tools or brushing up the basics compounds into every future task. To me, it’s about having the right tools for the job, not just “feeling ready.” If you’re just testing out an idea or hacking a weekend prototype, ship fast and save the sharpening for later.

But honestly? Sometimes the urge to polish is pure comfort. Like hanging around the build scripts just to feel productive, or refactoring that function nobody touches. If I’m being straight with you, I’ve killed afternoons alphabetizing import statements because it felt good. We laugh about it, but status theater is a trap for makers. You know you’re in trouble when a day slips by and all you have to show for it is a cleaner README. If you recognize yourself here, good. That little chuckle can be the signal to ship instead.

Quick tangent: This genuinely hit home after sharpening my kitchen knives last month. I’d ignored them for ages, just pushing harder on every tomato. One Saturday, I finally pulled out the stone. Twenty minutes later, I was slicing faster than I thought possible.

Same with my bike—after cleaning and oiling the chain, my commute felt half as hard. I’d always heard “a sharp axe saves time, effort, and frustration”—sure, but standing there flipping onions, I finally saw what that meant. It’s true in code: shaving seconds off a build, snapping through model training without errors, rolling out a product update without the drag of technical debt. The prep should transform sweat into progress, not just kill time. If sharpening doesn’t convert friction into actual gains, it’s probably not worth it right now.

Thinking strategically, there’s a sneaky third option. Sometimes it’s smarter to buy than build. Outsource the sharpening and keep throughput high. If there’s a better third-party tool, managed service, or backup library, grab it and move on. Honestly? Maybe Abe should’ve outsourced the sharpening and kept chopping with a backup axe—max throughput, zero downtime.

The last two are my favorites. If you’re building product or ML, time is runway and the real bet is focus vs procrastination. There’s always uncertainty, so you’re really wagering on the highest-leverage next step—not prepping for prep’s sake. Ask yourself what would make the next loop measurably easier or faster. If the answer is “sharpen now,” do it. If not, build, test, and learn. Don’t wait for perfect before shipping—the point is to accelerate learning and get real feedback fast, making each cycle smarter than the last. That’s what separates busywork from momentum.

Grounding the Leverage Test: Three Scenarios and Some Quick Math

Let’s paint this with an example that’s probably landed in your lap before. Imagine you’re mid-cycle, staring at code that’s begging for a refactor or ship call—but the feature deadline looms. Should you pause and clean things up, or just ship what you have? Here’s my rule. If tightening up tests, upgrading CI, or adding that tiny abstraction will keep you from wrestling the same bugs or copy-paste for hours over the next sprint, sharpen now. Otherwise, ship and deal with mess later. You can spot these moments by how fast value shows up. Better tests mean less brain-drain tomorrow. Quick returns signal leverage—and you know it when you see it.

Switch gears to ML. Maybe you’re deciding whether to run with a quick baseline, or invest time in cleaning up data and wrangling features. This is classic sharpening. The shortcut—dumping everything into auto-labeling—feels fast, but can easily backfire. Data labeling done fast can introduce bias and errors, making cleanup a high-leverage sharpening compared to rushing automated tags. If the next iteration depends on learning something real, a scrappy cleanup is worth more than fancy model tricks.

Product work? Same story, tighter timeline. You notice a critical leak in your user flow, but you’re itching to roll out a new design system. Fix the leak now—the design system only makes sense when it’ll speed up future features, not just polish the edges. Sharpen when it meaningfully accelerates the next two releases. Otherwise, patch, deploy, and move.

If you find yourself on hour four without seeing speed for the next two cycles, Lincoln’s quote has your answer. It’s time to choose preparation vs execution—and chop, not sharpen. Prep can wait. Shipping is leverage now.

Your Decision Cheat Sheet: Prep That Leverages, Not Stalls

Now, give yourself five minutes—seriously, set a timer. Try out whichever interpretation of Lincoln’s advice feels most useful, sketch your plan, and jot a takeaway. It doesn’t matter if one interpretation is “right.” What matters is how it gets us thinking differently and lets us reason through the next real decision, not just the theory.

If you need a mantra before you dive back in, here’s mine: sharpen only when it amplifies the next swing. Otherwise, ship today and iterate tomorrow. That’s leverage in action.

And if I’m honest, I still have a half-written automation script in my drafts that’s been “almost ready” for months. Prepping should speed things up, but sometimes it’s just another kind of pause. Not sure I’ll ever land that balance perfectly—and maybe that’s okay.