How to Be More Productive in Your Garden (and Your Life)

Do you want a successful garden, but aren’t sure how to get from here to there? Here’s my #1 tip for how to be more productive in the garden (and in life).

When you look at a huge, productive garden, it can really make you feel like an underachiever.

Or a total, complete loser.

You have 1 little bed of anemic spinach in your backyard—which you keep forgetting to harvest—but there’s that guy down the street with 10 amazing beds overflowing with produce.

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How does he do it? How do you build something big? And who in the world has time to get something big done?

You do. You can do great things. I’m going to tell you how.

How to Be More Productive

I’ve written 15 books since 2015. Many of you may be familiar with my gardening books, such as “Compost Everything” and “Totally Crazy Easy Florida Gardening,” but I’ve also ghostwritten books and published fiction under various pen names.

At the same time, I built a large YouTube channel, managed the audiobook branch of a publisher, moved overseas, and managed to still spend time with my wife and children.

How?

One. Piece. At. A. Time.

That’s how I get my books done, and the rule has applied well to the rest of my projects.

The Key to Long-Term Successes

If you want a great garden, you’re probably not going to make it happen in one insane weekend. Sure, you can work that way—and it’s better than not trying at all—but I have found that the key to long-term success is taking one bite at a time, chewing it, swallowing it, then taking another bite. With enough bites you can eat an entire elephant.

There’s a great book on painting titled “Daily Painting: Paint Small and Often To Become a More Creative, Productive, and Successful Artist” by Carole Marine. In it, Carole shares how she made herself paint a tiny canvas every single day for years and blog her progress. In a short period of time, she was not only a much better artist, she was also making a living from her art.

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I tried to write a few novels when I was younger, to little effect. I would start a story, then drift off into something else. I might have a few days where I wrote a few thousand words, followed by months of nothing. When I finally finished my first novel, it had taken me over three years… and it was a terrible mess.

It wasn’t until I started making myself blog daily on my gardening site that I really learned how to write a book. You write it “one piece at a time,” as Johnny Cash sang. Except you aren’t stealing anything. You’re reclaiming pieces of your day and making them count for something.

If you make yourself write 100 words per day, every day, at the end of a year you’ll have written 36,500 words.

It takes a few minutes to write a hundred words. It’s really easy.

Now take a step up. A hundred words is really a very tiny bite. It’s not much at all. It’s like a little birdie nibble, rather than a big boy bite.

Try writing 500 words per day. You can write that in a half hour. That will net you a staggering 182,500 words per year. That’s three short novels or one good, long one!

One piece at a time.

Consistency Is Key

What do you want to accomplish? Don’t look at the entire, gigantic goal and say “THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!” It’s not!

The trick to how to be more productive is to be consistent. That’s it. Set yourself an achievable goal and attack it every day until it becomes part of your life.

My daily blog was hard to maintain for the first 30 days, then it just became part of my life and routine. When I started writing books a few years after starting the blog, they were easy to write. One piece at a time.

Do you want to learn woodworking? Spend a bit of time on it every day you can.

Do you want to lose weight? Approach it one meal at a time—ditch carbs and sugar, meal by meal, and you’ll drop the pounds.

Would you like to create an amazing garden? Spend a few minutes every day on your garden and it will become amazing.

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Even 10 minutes in the garden, every day, will make your veggie patch the envy of Pinterest ladies around the world.

Your enemy is yourself. If something is important to you, spend time on it. A little, every day, and amazing things will happen.

I wish I’d learned that lesson sooner. I’d have almost a hundred books written by now!

Kill the distractions. Turn off your phone. Conquer one piece at a time.

You can do it.

What Do You Think?

What’s your best tip for how to be more productive in the garden? Let us know in the comments below!

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