Have you pruned your projects lately?
I started thinking about this last week when I was pruning our rosebushes. In case you’ve never done it, pruning plants is more art than it is science. It requires you to consider both the growth that’s on the plant at the same time that you think about how you want the plant to grow. Each limb, each fork, and each new bud requires examination and intuition-based decisions.
It’s always a bittersweet process for me. I don’t like pruning the new growth that is already there, but I know that with a gentle trim, the plant will flourish better than if it just grew wild. Trimming the right growth causes the to plant divert its precious life energy to the growth that will bring the best blossoms.
How similar we are in the projects and commitments we grow! Every new project and commitment requires the time and focus that is our creative life energy, and, at a certain point, the upkeep on them is such that it’s hard to get any one of them to blossom. Instead of remarkable products and budding relationships, we end up with projects continually half-done, friends/family/clients half-satisfied, and experiences half-lived. Twenty buds that never got the nourishment they needed never outshines the ten blossoms that did.
Unfortunately, we do not have the gentle gardener that comes through and delicately trims our projects and commitments so that we grow the way we could. Instead, the sometimes harsh storms of time, money, and stress force us to pare down what we’re trying to do, and all too often the growth that helps us flourish is the first growth to be broken by the winds – we respond and fix urgent crises and are left with so little energy for the important stuff that those things never get a chance to grow.
The month of May happens to be a great month for pruning both roses and projects. We’ve had a few months to see which of our New Year’s Resolutions or ideals have made progress and which have not. The mere possibilities of the summer are now much closer to nexus of actuality and impossibility. It’s time for us to choose what major things we will grow this year now, in the spring sun, before the summer sun comes and scorches the weak growth into the ground.
Take a look at your projects, someday/maybes, and dreams for this year. Which are you going to prune so that the others can blossom? (Tweet this.)
Great metaphor. But you’ve never pruned Sage have you? That stuff you just chop right back to almost the ground. Looks really violent but you end up with a really good looking sage plant in no time. I do it twice in a summer (though then I have more sage than I can possibly use).
Rose pruning is a great business example though. And the rule is usually to take out about a third of the old growth to allow space for new things. Letting in light and air.
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It really is all about priorities, isn’t it? I think the analogy to pruning is very apt. A gardener has a lot of experience in trimming back growth so the rest can flourish, but there are definite choices that have to be made when that’s happening. And some of those choices have to be made blindly, without fully understanding the opportunity cost of cutting back one branch over the other. The more experienced the gardener, the more likely they are to prune where it needs to be pruned and leave the best options viable. Great post, Charlie.
Wonderful post!! I think this is such a good analogy and SUCH an important concept. In order to really allow the key elements in our lives to flourish, we have to prune others. I really enjoyed this — thanks!
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Great post! Just yesterday I was thinking, as I deadheaded the roses, about the similarities between deadheading and purging your files and commitments. Just as deadheading allows the plant to stop putting energy toward a flower that isn’t blooming anymore and focus it to making more blooms, purging allows you to quit putting mental energy into stuff that isn’t blooming and shows you where to put your energy for the greatest rewards. Salute from a fellow gardener!
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A lot of it is not only focusing your time, but removing the “burden” of uncompleted projects from the back of your mind. You need to concentrate not just your time but also your unconscious mental energies on what’s most important and right in front of you, and acknowledging that some of what you want to do isn’t going to happen (or isn’t going to happen any time soon, at least) is a big part of that.
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