Douglas Flora, Executive Medical Director of Yung Family Cancer Center at St. Elizabeth Healthcare, President-Elect of the Association of Cancer Care Centers, and Editor in Chief of AI in Precision Oncology, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Too Busy Sawing: On Urgency, renewal, and the tool that medicine keeps refusing to pick up
The woodcutter didn’t have a dull blade because he was lazy.
He had a dull blade because he never stopped cutting.
Stephen Covey built Habit Seven of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People around that single insight. A woodcutter, hours into a losing battle with a stubborn tree, is asked why he doesn’t stop to sharpen the saw. His answer is the whole problem: I don’t have time. I’m too busy sawing.
I spent fifteen years as a community oncologist running exactly that conveyor belt. Inbox past a hundred items by mid-morning. Prior auth calls stacked between patients. Reading CT scans at eleven at night because that was the only window left in the day. Eating nothing. Leaving late. Doing it again tomorrow.
I wasn’t failing. I was sawing as hard as I could.
The blade was getting duller every year.
The most exhausted, most committed professionals in American medicine in 2026 are the woodcutters Covey was writing about. And the saw that needs sharpening is sitting right in front of us. It is called AI. And most of us keep walking past it – not because we don’t believe in it, but because stopping feels like a luxury the day will not allow.
I understand that. I lived inside it for fifteen years.
This week, find one task you do at least three times – a note, a prior auth letter, a summary. Do it once with AI instead. Three weeks of that. Notice what changes.
The whetstone is on the workbench. An hour. That is the whole ask.
I wrote the longer version on Substack – the full argument for why “next year” is the most expensive phrase in medicine right now.”
Other articles featuring Douglas Flora on OncoDaily.