You Can’t Sharpen a Knife While You’re Cutting
Real resilience is not about how much you can handle. It is about the discipline to stop.
I have been the bad guy in this story.
I can still see them standing across my desk. It was the end of a Tuesday. Late afternoon. The reporter was weary. I know this because I was looking at them. I could see the adrenaline draining from their body. I could see the weight of exhaustion settling into the space behind their eyes.
I never stopped to recognize any of it.
I never said good job. I never told them to go home.
I slid a press release across my desk. It had just come through my inbox.
“Can you turn this around,” I asked. “It will just take a few calls. We need it for the morning.”
I did not wait for a reply. I did not give them the chance to say no. I spun my chair back to my screen and chased the next fire sitting in front of me.
I told myself I was being a good manager. I told myself I was keeping us moving. I told myself this is how the business works.
But I was teaching them a terrible lesson.
I was teaching them that their bandwidth had no limit. I was treating their energy like a well I could draw on without end. I was asking them to succeed with a reflexive yes.
Newsrooms train us to do this. The reporter who never stops is celebrated. The editor who stays until midnight is lionized. The person who says no becomes a caricature. We have made commitment synonymous with availability.
There is a flaw in that logic.
Resilience is found in the pause.
The Boxer in the Corner
Think of a professional athlete for a second. No player competes at full strength for eight hours straight. No one expects that. No one rewards that.
Imagine a boxing match. Rounds are short for a reason. When the bell rings, the boxer does not keep punching to show they still have energy. They sit. They go to the corner.
That minute is not rest. It is the part of the fight that lets them keep fighting.
The cutman tends to the bleeding. The trainer offers clarity. Stop dropping your left hand. The hook is open. He looks tired.
The corner gives the fighter support. It lets them reset. It provides what they need to last the distance.
A fighter who refuses to sit will lose. They might wave off the stool to prove they are tough, but they miss the water. They miss the instruction. They miss the reset. They walk into the next round blind and bleeding.
We have created an industry of reporters and editors who refuse the corner.
We treat the pause as failure. We assume that if we stop filing for even a second, we will lose the audience. So we keep swinging. We swing until the form breaks. We swing until the aim slips. And eventually we take a punch we never saw coming.
Real resilience shows up in the corner. It shows up in the ability to sit long enough to see what is happening.
The Dull Blade
The same principle applies to our work.
I hear leaders talk about the need to sharpen our coverage or sharpen our strategy. We need to be smarter. We need to offer more solutions. We need our work to have more impact in the communities we serve.
But you cannot sharpen a knife while you are cutting with it.
If you keep slicing without a pause, the blade dulls. It does not matter how skilled you are. It happens.
And when the blade dulls, the work gets harder. You push harder. You pull harder. The edges of the story get ragged. The nuance disappears. You reach for templates because you do not have the edge to carve something clean.
If you want a sharper tool, you stop cutting. You step away long enough to make the edge real again.
For journalists and strategy leads, sharpening often looks like nothing. It looks like reading. It looks like walking. It looks like sitting with a problem long enough to understand it before you try to solve it.
It looks like turning the newsroom into a place that tests solutions instead of a place that reacts to problems. It looks like turning research into practice instead of glancing at a chart and sliding it into the back of a meeting deck.
Most breakthroughs I have seen in newsrooms did not happen during breaking news meetings. They happened in the pauses when someone finally had enough space to think.
And yet we stay terrified of the silence. So we keep hacking at complex challenges with tired tools. We try to cut through wood with a butter knife.
Finding the Ways Forward
And this is how I loop back to the reporter I failed years ago.
I should have told them to go home. I should have said the press release could wait. I should have accepted that we might miss that story.
The impact of that single press release was negligible. The cost of burning out a talented reporter was enormous.
We need a different way to work. One that is not built on the idea of doing more with less. One that is built on doing the right things with intention and with focus.
Leaders have to champion the pause. We have to be the ones to ring the bell. We have to insist on the stool. We have to look at our calendars and ask if this is cutting or if this is only motion.
The answer to the challenges we face is not another yes. It is the strategic no.
When we stop, the blur settles. Clarity returns. And in that clarity, we see the ways forward that were impossible to notice while we were swinging at everything in sight.
We stop so we can start winning again.
What is one thing you need to say “no” to right now to get your edge back? Drop it in the comments. Let’s hold each other accountable for the pause.
P.S. — Did this analysis provide you with a breakthrough strategy?
If so, please consider making a one-time tip to support the deep research and analysis that goes into every Backstory & Strategy post.
Additionally, if you found this post helpful, please restack it and share it with your audience. This spreads the word and keeps me writing the types of content you enjoy.