I seem to work harder and harder and get less and less done. Thanks to the old man's advice I'm gradually turning things around. The trick is to work smarter, not harder. When you work machines and they are not well maintained, you tend to push them harder to sustain the same amount of production. As a result the machine wears out quicker.
Horses wear out quicker, too.
More important, working an animal like a machine is downright cruel. This sounds like common sense, but how many times have you put your horses on a log and on the first try they did not move the log, so you backed them up and let them try again. This time the horses move a couple of inches and you think it's going to come now. So you back them up and try once more. Again you back the horses and give it another try.