Why productivity reminds me of plants

Last week, I had a wonderful week away at my parent's house. Thanks to the pandemic guidelines allowing a person who lives alone to form a social bubble, I have been able to see them a few times, as long as they drive the 2hrs each way to pick me up.

One of the things we got to do was a socially distanced trip to the garden centre. I have a gardener who rakes my front flowerbed as well as cutting the grass and my mum had noticed how sad the front flower bed looked so she offered to sort me some good plants to just liven it up a bit.

So now I have some plants in the front and it looks wonderful!

However plants are living and breathing and require care in the form of regular watering, amongst other things.

It got me thinking about the parallels with productivity. If you don't water the plants regularly, they die.

Now you might be thinking, but productivity isn't so life or death? No it's not, but if you don't build momentum in the form of regular habits, your productivity will die out, things won't get finished or even started and you will hit a slump.

Sadly we can't motivate ourselves with just some water (although showers and drinking lots of water every day can help), but we can still do self-care steps to ensure we remain motivated.

This can be healthy eating, fresh air, exercise, meditation, a routine, weekly/daily planner or whatever works for you. The key is discipline and sticking to it.

Get into the habit of doing things like you would getting into the habit of watering plants and maybe your productivity can bloom!