How to decide what's important

Deadhead your to do list plus this week's top 3 & harvest list.

With a long list of tasks I’d love to do in the garden and all sorts of other responsibilities, I wonder that I could spend a week working out which are the most important and which low hanging fruit I can allow to drop, and, rot.

Dave Allen wrote his book ‘How to get things done’ not so he could be ultra productive but so he could go and party! Rather than try to race through the list, wouldn’t it be great to know what we really need to do so we can laze in the hammock, hang out and enjoy this beautiful month of long days and evenings.

There is a well known ‘Time Management Matrix’ by Stephen Covey which looks like the answer but you could spend a lot of time churning through tasks defined by someone else’s idea of ‘urgent and important’ if you don’t consider what defines yours.

I ran a planning course in February this year and we worked backwards from what we wanted from our flower growing this year. Everyone had completely different desires for this. We wrote these out in as fewer words as possible to focus the project; a clear desired outcome together with plots measured out, and finally how much time and when equalled a brief. Then any plant or combination that didn’t meet this could be quickly dropped.

For instance, growing for a particular event in September in 12m2 meant that there wasn’t enough room, or reason, to grow the June flowering peony in that spot.  They loved them so instead grew in a pot where it could be wheeled out by the front door to enjoy and moved back away once it had fleetingly flowered.

I can just about get through the urgent and important tasks at home and on the plots but in my business, I get a lot of opportunities to do many different things. How do I decide which of those to explore. Which do I volunteer or ‘gift’ which do I do for the bills and which to say no to?

Recently, with a house move plus some unexpected events and challenges, it’s been much harder to review those. When there simply wasn’t the time or the energy to even do urgent and important tasks. I needed to return to my own life brief!

I am a big fan of clearing the decks and stripping everything back too get clarity. In fact moving is a wonderful opportunity to do this and it has! It also allowed me to go back to reviewing exactly what were my values; those that defined exactly what was important to me and my work.

Put aside those everyday tasks, how do you choose what to do next? Be it a small task on the to do list, a career change or how to respond to an opportunity. 

It all comes down to values.

But do you know yours?

I reckon we can all spout a list of nice ones like ‘doing good, family, time with friends’ etc but have you ever really stripped those back to what really matters?

I came across this challenge in a Brené Brown book ‘Dare to Lead’ which isn’t quite what you might think it is from the title. But anyway, Brene challenges us to pick just two vlalues from the list below. She knows it’s hard and I haven’t met one person who hasn’t said ‘but I just can’t’. But you can. Pick 15 first and keep whittling them down. This has been great fun and asking friends and family to choose. It’s incredibly enlightening.

What did you choose?

I’ll go first. Mine are ‘Connection’ and ‘Beauty’. I did this exercise some time again and again just now; they have’t changed. That’s how you know that they deeply resonate.

You can do anything, but you can’t do everything. And when I am overwhelmed and wondering what to focus on, I will return back to this. Almost akin to a mantra or meditation. It stripes away so much. I can confidently say that everything that I am doing, the projects and people I’m working with all come back to holding those values front and centre. But it runs deeper. Those values help define who I spend time with, what I do with my time and much more. I liken it to lifting my clockwork car in my ‘game of life’ and putting it back on track.

Go on, tell me, what are yours? Did they surprise you? Does anything need to change in your game of life?

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I know many areas have had rain this week, and flash storms but Essex is living up to its name as the driest sunniest county this week. But fingers crossed we are doing just about ok and I’m hoping to clear all the seeding weeds before they release 7 years of horror. I’m always optimistic!

This weeks top tasks on the plots -

1. If you haven’t already, plant everything out! I still have many in trays and sad dahlia tubers in packets. They’ll all be fine. I am still not watering plants until they show signs of new growth after planting. But I do water them well with a seaweed feed before hand. Some do just curl up and wither but watering wouldn’t have done anything for those anyway. But those that do settle in, grown away quickly and create strong deep roots.

2. Sowing summer salads, basil and roots in-between crops - where there have been failures (see above) and in between different species to increase the soil health and biodiversity. And of course delicious on my plate.

3. Lifting and drying rancunulus corms, cutting back golden dry foliage of narcissus and planting final annual seedlings.

I’m harvesting -

• Perennial & annual poppies, ,mint, cornflowers, sweet rocket, sweet william, cephalaria, scabious, achillea, canterbury bells, foxgloves, and first of the roses (I cut mine down very late!) Almost, almost eremurus or foxtail lily.

I’m not cutting much foliage from shrubs and trees since it is semi ripe - too ripe to sear and not mature enough to cope on their own. Should be able to in July as stems toughen up a bit. This is where herbs like mint and lemon balm are great foliage for this month.

Edible Flowers -

• Anchusa, achillea, sweet william, sweet rocket, roses, cornflowers.