Don't Overwater

One of the biggest lessons I took from raising houseplants was this: you can only water them so often. Working harder, giving them more attention, spending more time with them...does not make them grow faster.

Yes. Yet again I'm here to draw a parallel between career/life/business and growing plants. Apparently this is what I do now. This will be a quick one, though.

I have a money tree that broke while I was moving, one of its biggest branches snapped off. At first I was heartbroken--an overreaction, I admit, but I'd gotten attached--until I realized it was a chance to try propagating it. I'm sure there's a metaphor here, too, that I'll unpack in a future post. But for now, what's important is that I was suddenly trying to grow a plant that had no roots.

To do that, I dribbled just a bit of water into the soil of the new pot every morning, right at the base of the branch. I still don't know if this is best practice, but it worked! I've now got two (2) money plants!

This new plant needed far more attention than the old one, which is in an Easyplant pot that only needs refilling once per month. But here's the key: consistency and maintenance, coming back each day to top it off, helped it survive long enough to grow new sprouts after several months.

What it did not require: hours of labor.

Culturally, at least here in the US, we get a lot of messaging that hard work is everything. Hustle culture. Protestant work ethic. Whatever you want to call it, we have this idea that if you're not seeing success, it's because you're not working hard enough.

I'm here to tell you: that's bullshit.

(Bullshit probably does make things grow faster, actually. Remind me to research manure for a future post.)

Take job hunting. In the past several years, I've probably applied to several hundred jobs. When you're unemployed, or unhappily employed, and you're trying to find something new, you apply to jobs, right? And if you don't get one, the message is, you're not applying hard enough.

What the hell does that mean? Sending out more applications? Even if you're sending 10 a day, which I was at times, that still doesn't actually take that much time out of your day. For jobs that ask for cover letters, sure, you could write a new one from scratch every time. But does that help?

From my personal experience, there seems to be zero correlation between how much work or time I put into an application and whether or not I get it. Zero. So why hurt yourself, exhaust your limited energy, for fruitless begging for a job?

It is, unfortunately for your bank account, a long game. You can only apply to so many jobs because only so many relevant jobs exist, so you just have to keep at it. Water a bit each day. The growth will come when it comes, and watering more will not speed it up.

This applies to existing jobs and businesses, too. The work I'm doing right now? So much of it is just...waiting for people to get back to me.

Sure, I can poke harder, try to get responses faster. But that very quickly turns into the email version of overwatering: inbox flooding. Which is bad for everyone.

So I keep an eye on my inbox the way I keep an eye on my money tree, and I water when it needs it, and I reply to people when they do reach out, and in the meantime?

Rest is good for the soul.