There’s a story about two woodchoppers that I heard.

We’ll call them Rush and Richard.

Each woodchopper starts the day with an identical axe that they bought from the Acme Axe Corporation of Canada.

And they each set to work chopping down trees.

Rush keeps chopping down trees constantly through the day.  He has on a camel back which is a backpack with a pouch full of water that he drinks through a long rubber straw.  Rush takes 20 minutes to eat lunch and then keeps on chopping.

Richard does things a little different, he chops wood, but often takes breaks and sits down.

Rush thinks that Richard is being lazy.

But at the end of the day…. Richard has cut down three times as much wood as Rush.

It turns out that Richard was sharpening his axe while he was sitting down.

While you’re learning saxophone, you can take either approach

You can constantly push and play a lot of shows in the same way.  You practice the same thing every day since it’s the way you’ve always practiced saxophone.  You’ll get slowly better.

Or you can really sharpen your skills on sax and also think about your approach, listen to new music, take new approaches, and experiment.  You can also pay attention to the audience and see which songs and styles move the people.  Then you can change up what you’re doing.

I like the second approach.

What do you think?