Words of wisdom from a 10 year old: “Mom, you really have to clean out your garden.”
She didn’t mean I have to weed it. My garden has no weeds because it doesn’t have room. She meant I have to trim back the “good” plants.
The lemon balm is choking out the lavendar. The peppermint has invaded the strawberries. The day lilies have grown so thick that they aren’t blooming.
I need to remove about half the day lilies and two thirds of the peppermint. And I probably need to remove remove the lemon balm altogether, since lavendar is supposed to be the centerpiece.
Beginner gardeners often assume the most important task in their garden is to weed it. But, especially in a perennial garden, the most important task is actually to trim back, reshape, and even completely remove good, healthy, plants.
Too many plants and none of them perform well.
Our lives are much the same.
At first the challenge is to weed out the unhealthy things in our lives. But at some point, we fill our time with worthwhile things and few weeds remain. But neither is there growing room.
Sometimes we are doing one activity with vigor, but not giving ourselves enough room to breathe, so we aren’t blooming. Then we must prune back and reshape our activities.
Sometimes we are doing too many things at once. Then we must cut things out altogether.
It hurts to do this, because we must remove productive, healthy activities that bring us joy, just like my lemon balm. But our lives only have so much space. If we attempt too many good activities, our efforts will choke each other out. Then none of our efforts will produce the fruit we expect.
To reach maximum productivity with the thing that matters most, we must be willing to do less with our time.