Maintaining Your Garden Vs. Planting Seeds

This week’s newsletter was initially going to be called “How To Not Be A Busy Idiot” - thanks Alex Johnson for the recommendation, I like it! Alex realized that I didn’t post this newsletter on Sunday (Legend). I had taken a week off. I realized on Sunday at about 10pm that I could either post something to meet the quota, or I could write this newsletter the day after with a proper email for you lovely lot. Tomorrow became a few tomorrows but here we are!

---

One thought: Are you working on high-leverage tasks? ⚡️

So why can this happen? Why do we sometimes fall short on finding the time to do something that is important?

Alex told me that recently he’s been feeling like a ‘busy idiot’. I thought this is a brilliant topic to delve into. I feel his pain! We can get so stuck in the weeds of projects, work, and the admin of life that at the end of the week, we wonder what we even achieved. This happens, and firstly I want to say that this is OK!

It takes conscious effort to negotiate our schedules to ensure that we focus on tasks that will move the needle. This won’t just happen automatically. We are not born with a default mindset to focus on only important things and to eliminate everything else. A superpower like this wouldn’t even work because it’s subjective! There’s so much noise in our day-to-day lives. This is something we have to take ownership of.

I’ve written about the importance of understanding yourself and I think this is really important. Asking yourself questions like “When do I work best?” and “What works for me?” are great starting points. This is, of course, a personalized experience.

I was recently invited to be on a podcast which was super fun. The host mentioned that she wanted to start a personal blog and this led to a really nice concept being formed. Out of nowhere, I had a moment of divine inspiration where I asked her: ‘Throughout the week are you just maintaining your garden or are you planting seeds?”

She liked this. I loved this.

When we have easy-to-remember sayings they can come to us when we need them the most. ‘Done is better than perfect’ comes to mind when I’m being a perfectionist, ‘Motivation is a myth’ comes to mind when I’m telling myself not to do something. I am so glad I have these memorable phrases.

When evaluating how I spend my time, going forward I want to ask myself this question. Am I taking time to plant seeds? Where ‘planting seeds’ can be simply defined as any activity that will have a long-term benefit. This might be building a relationship with someone, it might be starting a project that excites you, or learning something new and upskilling yourself. The more time we can spend planting seeds and working on high-leverage tasks, the more useful output we will achieve.

Here are some tips I suggest for implementing this. They have helped me greatly to focus on high-leverage activities:

Maker Mornings

“How do you work best?” My answer to this question is having time in the mornings to get important work done. Historically, this has mainly been used to work on a personal project or a side hustle before my 9-5. Nowadays, it’s more about having thinking time with no distractions, as typically we run into our weeks with no real direction planned out. I like to spend my mornings writing long-form content like this newsletter or a script for a YouTube video. During the day I struggle to make room for these activities as there are just too many niggling tasks demanding attention.

Accountability

Incorporating accountability has been so important to me. Recently, I’ve agreed to check in with a friend every Monday morning where we will both bring to the chat at least 3 goals that we want to accomplish this week. These are high-leverage tasks, which if completed, will have a huge impact. If left alone to my own devices, I know that I would probably procrastinate and not achieve these goals. It’s Thursday and I feel pressure to get them done by the end of the week. Install this into your own week if it sounds up your street!

I have a standing offer to be anyone’s accountability buddy. Tell me what you want to do and I’ll check in with you to help you complete it.

Regular check-ins

How often do you check-in with yourself? Monthly? Weekly? Daily? The frequency of this is again personal. Do what works for you. I have the tasks I am being held accountable to achieve - which would make the week a great week - and then I try to write down the most important tasks of the day in my mornings and then I tackle these first. If this sounds good to you, you might like my previous newsletter about energy management.

I LOVE THIS 👇

I interviewed Maya Grossman recently who realized in her job that approximately 20% of the tasks she was doing were not important. She felt nobody would notice if she didn’t do them and so she did a little experiment. She didn’t do these tasks for one week. As expected, nobody noticed and she was able to get results by saving her energy and focusing on more important ‘movers’.

Can you do an experiment like this?

I hope this email was worth the wait. If you have a topic you’d like me to write about, please reply to this email and your name shall be mentioned, tagged and circled in a heart!

I appreciate you,

Joe

---

Content tip of the week 🚀

So I took a week off last week and I was about to say: “I don’t usually do this…”. But that’s stupid. That’s falling into the trap of wearing the “I’m busy and I’m proud of it” badge and no, no, no Joe. That’s not a good look. I want to have more weeks/weekends where I completely switch off and place all my attention on seeing friends, reading a book, or perhaps having a nice bike ride. Isn’t that why we want to be productive?

Plan your content ahead. You realize why this is so important when you want a day off or a nice holiday. If you prepare content in advance, you can (if you want to) still post your content and keep up the momentum. Of course, it’s entirely fine to not post content for a week or two. Maybe this is when we should use content schedulers so we don’t have to post manually!

---

Article(s) of the week ✍️

Productivity Isn’t About Time Management. It’s about Attention Management - Adam Grant, New York Times

I came across this article after hearing Adam Grant as a guest on the Tim Ferriss Show. My favourite line was: “When I wrote down in my calendar my tasks for the day, I didn’t know I would be in deep-focus at this moment.” This stood out to me as we can meticulously plan out every hour of our day, but the most important thing is output. I’m finding that I enjoy allowing myself larger blocks of time to really get deep into a project or a task and getting to that point of deep focus.

---

This Week’s YouTube Video - Subscribe here! 🎥

I’m really excited to share this video series over the next few weeks! Maya Grossman has worked at Google and Microsoft and climbed her way to seniority of VP Marketing at a FinTech startup Colu. She shares amazing advice on how we can take our career paths into our hands and the importance of focusing on soft skills. Practical and tangible advice that we can all implement.

---

I’m Joe, a content marketer passionate about personal development and psychology. Every Sunday, I write an email newsletter with 1 thought, 1 content tip and 1 article I’d recommend. Usually, I go over-board and provide a little more 😁

Add me on LinkedIn + subscribe to my YouTube channel for LinkedIn tips!