Which weeds are you watering? Notice the wording of the question. It doesn’t ask if you are watering weeds. The question assumes that you are watering weeds. It doesn’t imply that you should or shouldn’t be watering weeds. That is up to you to figure out. The question simply asks for awareness of, and self-reflection on, what you are watering.
We all water weeds, both in our gardens and in our lives.
Have you ever wondered why some people seem to have more time than you do? How can they work fulltime, attend their kids’ games, and still find time to take care of their physical and mental health? How do they run a company, help their kids with homework, teach Sunday school, and still make it to the gym?
Best of all, how do they do all of this without losing their peace of mind and even staying calm in the chaos of life?
It’s easy to see that we all have 24 hours each day, but some people seem to be able to stretch those hours. That’s because these people have figured out how to stop watering the weeds.
They spend their time and energy on the things that matter.
I recently watched The Art of Stopping Time by Pedram Shojai. It was a short video packed with a ton of wisdom. During the first 10-15 minutes of the video, Shojai relates our lives to a garden. In this analogy, he talks about the importance of identifying which five plants we really want in our garden and which weeds we keep watering.
This concept of the life garden (along with many, many other insightful concepts) is included on his website, podcast, and book: The Urban Monk.
One of the benefits of teaching Introduction to Psychology is that I get to touch on many interesting topics. There are many ways to address the ideas of consciousness and attention. Keeping in mind that one of my goals as an educator is to provide my students with things they can apply to daily life, I asked them to consciously consider how they spend their time and energy.
Many of my students are still trying to figure out how to balance the new freedom of college with the concept of deadlines. They struggle to understand why they can’t really multitask even though they think they should be able to. Some of them don’t know where their time goes each day. Now that I write it out, that sounds a lot like many adults I know, except for the “new freedom” part.
Anyway, as usual, I was impressed with their responses. They could clearly articulate what was important in their lives. They talked openly about the unnecessary things they continued to spend time and energy on. Honestly, my students gave most of the same answers that I would have given.
The most insightful part was our discussion about what to do about this new self-discovery. It’s one thing to acknowledge what is important and admit that you are not as focused on those things as you would like to be. It is an entirely different thing to be able to articulate and execute a plan to close the gap.
As you look over their list, think about your own life garden.
Top 10 Plants – Important to Us
- Family
- School
- Friends
- Work
- Spiritual
- Sports/Exercise
- Self-care
- Happiness
- Health
- Responsibilities
Top 10 Weeds – Waste of Time/Energy
- Social Media
- Phone
- Stress/Anxiety/Overthinking
- TV/Movies
- Procrastination
- Shopping
- Sugar
- Social Activities
- Multitasking
- Saying “yes” to Everything
So, what’s the solution?
The first step is self-reflection. We need to reflect on what is truly important. Whatever they are, it’s your life, they’re your priorities. Maybe they aren’t the same as someone else’s. That’s fine. After all, you are the one who will answer for your life choices.
Next, we have to take an honest look at our lives and see where our time and energy are going. This doesn’t have to be a minute-by-minute accounting ledger. It can be as easy as looking back over the day to see what you actually spent time doing or thinking about.
Then, we need to assess whether or not our time and energy are going toward the things that we identified as priorities. This is probably the easiest part of the entire process. I said it was important, and either I did it or I didn’t.
Now, here comes the hard part. This is where we figure out how to stop watering the weeds and start focusing on what’s important. For some people, it will be as easy as deleting some apps on their phones. For others, it might mean scheduling time for the things that are important…and actually sticking to it.
Here are a couple of self-reflection questions that have helped me.
- Based on Shojai’s analogy, which five plants do you want in your garden? How much time and energy do those five plants need?
- What weeds do you continue to water?
- Why do you continue to water each of these weeds? What needs do they fulfill? Do they provide you with companionship, belonging, safety, or love? Or do they simply serve as a distraction from the hard work of life?
- Can you think of an easy way to hold yourself accountable?
- Do you journal? Maybe a daily journal practice will help keep account of your time and energy.
- Could these priorities be written as goals?
- Do you keep track of progress toward your goals?
- How can saying yes to one thing mean saying no to other things?
- How does all of this relate to procrastination and prioritization?
If you are concerned about the time you spend on social media or your phone, try downloading an app to help monitor your usage. Two apps that I know of are Moment and BreakFree. Who knows, getting a handle on this one area may help control the growth of the other weeds like stress, procrastination, and multitasking.
If you are interested in learning more about how to stop time, click on the link to register for access to the free video by Pedram Shojai: http://urltag.net/BqnhV
