The True Meaning of the Grindstone for Businesses (or, The Trouble With Metaphor)

The trouble with metaphor is that, without record of the object or action on which a metaphor is based, its true meaning can be lost. At least, that’s what came to me one day when I walked into my stepfather’s kitchen and saw his pedal-powered grindstone.

He’d picked it up some 20 years earlier but had only recently gotten around to having it sandblasted and re-painted, and as an embodiment of architect Louis Sullivan’s famous phrase “form follows function,” the grindstone was almost beautiful in its minimalism. Yet it was also a machine of which to be wary.

As a heavy circular stone set on a narrow steel frame, the machine was top-heavy. I’d long heard the metaphor “put your nose to the grindstone,” and like many, I’d accepted its common definition to work very hard at something. Yet in seeing an actual grindstone for the first time, I understood how misguided that definition was in light of what it originally meant.

Sure, an initial expenditure of energy was needed to set the wheel in motion. It was the same principle as launching an advertising campaign for a product or service that would hopefully be self-sustaining for years. However, true to Newton’s first law of physics, the stone would afterward remain in motion with comparatively small energy expenditure.

So it wasn’t about pedaling like mad—an implication in the widely used job description phrase “must thrive in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment.” Such vigorous constancy would only topple the grindstone and put its operator at great risk of injury.

To put one’s nose to the grindstone meant to work with finesse, balance and focused attention.

Such action, in the end, was likely what truly kept people safe and thereby businesses upright.