Take Care of Your Gardens
I’ve been struggling with “Work-Life” balance as a whole for a while now. In fact, I’ve even been advised to do away with the idea of “balance” but to focus on a “Work-Life RHYTHM” instead.
Now I think this is all sunshine and daisies for sure. However, if you’re like me, your work-life rhythm(WLR) is changing more than it is stagnant. A major effect of COVID was its destruction of everyone’s rhythms, thus creating more frustration for those who worked hard to establish a strong WLR in the first place.
“Without rhythm, friends will feel ostracized, hobbies will atrophy, and goals will never reach fruition.”
However, now more than ever, do we as humans need to establish great WLR and balance every part of our lives well. When rhythm is not established, friends will feel ostracized, hobbies will atrophy, and goals will never reach fruition. This is, as some say, “No Bueno” and we want to avoid this at all costs.
So here is my thought experiment I was challenged with recently that I would love to share with you:
You are a gardener with many gardens.
Think of each area of your life as a garden. Each garden is different, with different needs and different amount of time needed to keep healthy (#different).
Go ahead and list out your “Gardens.” Do it! Grab a sheet of blank paper, and simply write a list of all the areas of your life that you find important and you want to maintain. Mine are:
- Romantic Interest (my fiancé)
- Friendships
- Family
- Professional
- Fun
- Sleep
- Exercise
- Spiritual
Now it’s your turn! Don’t worry! I’ll still be here when you come back.
…
…
Okay good. Now that we’ve done this, let’s list them in order of importance. This may not seem like a big deal, but it will help us organize how much time to give to each one.
Here is my IDEAL list in order of importance:
- Spiritual
- Romantic Interest (my fiancé)
- Sleep
- Professional
- Family
- Friendships
- Exercise
- Fun
Now, I think your list will look a little bit different than mine. I put mine this way due to my own personal beliefs, struggles, and desires (although it was definitely difficult putting “Fun” at the bottom!).
“You want to be able to put in the least amount of time needed to keep each garden healthy.”
Now the last step is figuring out how much time we need to spend in our gardens. But we’re going to look at this in a realistic way! We don’t want to look at the MAXIMUM time we spend in our gardens. We want to find out the minimal time per day we need to spend in order to keep our gardens healthy. Now this may sound selfish, but in fact I believe it is the opposite.
We only have twenty-four hours in a day. I would prefer to never pack my day to the brim with all of this. This isn’t sustainable and certainly not realistic. You want to be able to put in the least amount of time needed to keep each garden healthy. What you are left with at the end is your “free time.” This is when you get to take what’s left over and assign it a purpose.
Some of us would like to spend our free time doing activities in the “fun” category. Others want to hustle and do more “professional” work. Sometimes, you may need to take your free time and fill it with personal relationship building.
The goal is not to max out each garden always, but rather to keep them all healthy at all times.
The final step is to take each garden and determine the time needed per day (determined in hours spent) to properly take care of each garden. Do it once without thinking, and then a second time through to trim everything down even more. Here was my first go ‘round without much thought:
After re-thinking my priorities and how much time I realistically should spend, here’s my final time alotted:
Now, everyone’s garden is different. I had a difficult time putting “Spiritual” at a minimal of 15 minutes per day. I thought “well, I REALLY should spend an hour” and “but i’m giving myself more time than that in another area, I shouldn’t … blah blah blah”
Do not think of what other people think about your gardens or what your gardens SHOULD look like.
You are the gardener.
Not your friends, not your boss*, and not your family. This is for YOU to decide. Remember, this is the MINIMAL amount.
This is the least amount you should devote per day to keep everything in your life healthy. Some people might find these numbers drastic, but take a look at how many hours per day I now get to keep! Sometimes this looks like doing a lot of research, sometimes I’m spending it at the beach. Others, I may be doing a deep dive on myself spiritually. Your free time is now given a definition and you have the authority to move your life where you want to go with the time given to you.
I really hope this helps you and encourages you! This is something I’m learning a lot about in my life and I hope it brings you value. Be sure to leave some “claps” if you got something out of this and give me a follow here and on other socials!
*I highly advise you against telling your boss you can only allot 4 hours a day to work. If you have agreed to work 9–5, do so… or find another job that lets you have a “minimum amount worked” or something. To be honest, sometimes we can be more productive with a limit of four hours per day than with a huge eight hour window.
