June 18, 2021

Hey, Friend!

I’m writing this from my kitchen table with the sunshine teasing me through my patio doors. 

This week’s sun paired with last week’s rain has me checking my garden obsessively each morning. Everything’s popped! It's very pandemic chic, but there's something about the process of gardening that is soothing and hopeful.  

The clearing of last year’s brush

Selecting a suitable soil and compost combination

Helicopter-parenting my indoor babies until they could move outside

The planting (!)

Fencing the garden to protect it from nibblers

Planting a tiny being and caring for it is exciting. Like parenting, I guess, but blissfully quieter. 

I want to find ways to bring this sense of calm into the rest of my work week. I wouldn’t be me if I weren’t constantly wondering (worrying?), what can I learn from this? 

Here’s where I’m at. 

🍃 1. Roots Trump Branches

When I walk out to my garden, I’m looking for progress--a visible sign that everyone is okay.

Watching the forming of new branches feels impressive. These new limbs are growing out to transport nutrients to fuel more growth. Huzzah!

Yet, I know some of my most hearty plants won’t be the ones spreading their branches super tall or crazy wide. The strongest, most productive are investing their energy into developing deep roots. These are the ones with the strongest foundation. They will become the most established in their soil and able to produce more fruit. 

I remind myself that developing solid rooting is what matters, not the flashiness of the branches. I think about this a lot, applying it to a myriad of situations. 

As a business, will you:

• Invest your energies into going deep on a specific need, technology, or vertical.   -or-

• Adopt a more shallow root system to grow the breadth (rather than the depth) of your services and cover more ground.

As a person in business, will you:

• Focus as a specialist with a deep understanding of your craft, becoming the Go-To on a singular topic.  -or-

• Develop as a generalist, proficient in many different things with lots of branches and spread to show for it. 

There is a need for both--roots and branches. How we choose to grow is just that--a choice for us to make. 

✂️ 2. Pruning is Self-Care

Early in my career, a much more experienced friend taught me to identify when the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. When the value of what I was getting wasn’t worth the effort to get it.  

In gardening, this reminds me to stay humble, not overcomplicate my plans, and to remember to pinch off those flowers and side shoots to help my plants focus on existing growth. 

It’s not hard to think of others areas in your life where this idiom applies. 

Spitballing here:

• Agencies or vendors who create work for you rather than alleviate it.
• The business/marketing activities you do because you’ve always done them even though they haven’t produced in years, if ever.
• Projects or clients you turn down because it's not worth the effort.
• People you leave off the email thread or don’t call so you don’t lose a day to nonsensical replies or posturing. (Just kidding! You would never do that!) 

If pruning your list truly is self-care (and I think it is), the opportunity to focus on what is MOST IMPORTANT in your day and prune back the rest is not only joyful, it’s crucial. 

At Overit, we’re starting to institute extended no-meeting work blocks companywide to allow our team to prune away some of the day’s distractions and focus on core work. It’s a little thing that’s a big thing. The more we can self-prune, the more WE control our day vs. the day controlling us. Also, I think, the happier we are.

💩 3. Things Grow Where You Didn't Plant Them

Many gardeners go into things with a plan. 

They map out what they will plant, where they want it to grow, and when it’ll go into the ground. There is research on which plants to buddy up to help encourage mutual growth. There is intent and spreadsheets and good intentions. 

Until you dropped a seed.

Or the wind blew another, and now it’s growing out of the concrete.

A chipmunk friend moved a pepper seed closer to the tomatoes.

Everything still thrives because plants adapt. So do we.  

Maybe you studied archeology, but after some twists and turns, you work in higher ed marketing and can’t imagine doing anything else.

You didn’t mean to start a popular YouTube series, but you began creating videos during a pandemic and fell in love with it (and so did your audience).

You hired Cameran as an office assistant but then learned she’s really into turning data into stories and is freakishly good at math.

Unexpected heroes are everywhere, popping up where you needed them even when it wasn’t an idea you intentionally planted. 

👉 4. There’s Enough Time To Get It Done.  

I go a little bonkers when mid-June rolls around and I know I have to get all my veggies into the ground. I feel rushed. Summer only lasts so long. 

Of course, it turns out there’s always enough time. 

One hundred days is plenty of time to grow buckets of full-sized potatoes, some gorgeous-looking eggplant, and broccoli the size of your head. You just have to be willing to dig in and get your hands dirty. 

It’s also enough time to fill gaps in your team (I’m hiring!), change a process that’s never worked, add a new service, or learn a skill. It seems intimidating at the moment. And yet, if you just start, you’ll be much further down the road than you thought, quicker than you ever imagined. 

😌 5. Everything is Fine. You Just Need Water.

This is what I and what’s growing in my garden most have in common.

When things look incredibly bleak, I just need some water and maybe a snack.

Visiting my garden fills the rest of my day with hope. There’s no such thing as an overnight success. Not in what you do every day and not in my garden. Thankfully, the fruits of your labor are worth it. And delicious. 

Thanks for reading. See you in two weeks.