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What
do you do when you have too many ideas and not enough time? Or similarly, what
about when you have too many tasks and not enough energy?
As an
entrepreneur, I feel like I’ve been battling this issue for a while. There is
always another opportunity to chase or a new product idea that sounds exciting.
For a long time, I felt guilty about ignoring good ideas that came my way and
so I kept adding more to my to-do list.
However,
during a recent conversation with Travis Dommert, I learned about a new
strategy for dealing with the issue of having too many ideas and projects.
It all
comes down to treating your life like a rose bush.
Let me
explain what Travis taught me…
Ideas
are Like Rose Buds
As a
rose bush grows it creates more buds than it can sustain. If you talk to an
experienced gardener, they will tell you that rose bushes need to be pruned to
bring out the best in both their appearance and their performance.
You
see, a rose bush isn’t like a tree. It can’t grow wider and taller each year.
And that means if you never trim away some of the buds, then the bush will
eventually exhaust itself and die. There are only so many resources to go
around. And if you really want a rose bush to flourish, then it needs to be
trimmed down not just once, but each year.
Ideas
are like rose bushes: they need to be consistently pruned and trimmed down. And
just like a rose bush, pruning away ideas — even if they have potential —
allows the remaining ideas to fully blossom.
Just
like the rose bush, we face constraints in our lives. We have a limited amount
of energy and willpower to apply each day. It’s natural for new ideas and
projects to come into our life — just like it’s natural for a rose bush to add
new buds — but we have to prune things away before we exhaust ourselves.
In
other words: new growth is natural and it’s normal for tasks and ideas to creep
into your life, but full growth and optimal living requires pruning.
We All
Need to Cut Good Branches
I like
the rose bush analogy because it brings up something that is often lost in most
conversations about productivity and simplicity: if you want to reach your full
potential, you have to cut out ideas and tasks that are good, but not great.
In my
experience, this is really hard to do.
If
you’re building a business, maybe you have 3 product lines that are profitable. Your
business might grow by 5x if you focus on all three, but which product line
will grow by 500x if you put all of your energy into it?
If
you’re training in the gym, there are all sorts of exercises that could make you
stronger. But which two or three exercises will build a foundation of strength
better than anything else?
If
you’re thinking about the relationships in your life,
there are dozens of people that you are connected to in some way. But which
people bring energy into your life and which ones suck energy out of it?
Most
rose buds could grow if they are given the chance. In other words, most buds
are like a good idea: they have potential. But in order for the entire bush to
flourish and live a healthy life, you have to choose the ones with the most
potential and cut the rest.
The
Bottom Line
Gardener
and writer Elizabeth Roth says, “Roses that are left unpruned can become a
tangled mess of old and new canes all competing for air and light.”
We can
say the same thing about our lives. A life left unpruned can become a twisted
knot of ideas, tasks, and projects competing for your limited time and
resources. If you don’t prune some of the branches from your life, the important
ones will never flourish.
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