I don’t know about you, but in my household the designated lawn person hates his job. It’s not that he hates everything – he likes the lawnmower, so anything green that is above four inches is likely to be shortened. And he likes his pump sprayer, especially when it’s filled with weed killer. Seriously, I’ve taken to planting my vegetables in containers and I gave up on green bushes years ago.
If you ask Lawnman why he chooses the tools he does, he’ll tell you it’s because they do the best job. They do the best job at what he wants to accomplish, which is finishing a boring and repetitive task as quickly as he can.
How many times do we confuse the real goal? And how does our work ultimately suffer?
I’m not beating up on Lawnman here, just making an observation that it’s human nature to want to get through the tasks we hate. The consequence of that may not be what we intended.
When we confuse expediency with accomplishment we lose sight of why we deemed the task necessary in the first place. And when we forget why something might be necessary then we've taken our eyes of the real goal.
This applies to everything we do. Whether it’s lawns, gardens, or the art business.


I love this observation-- thank you for sharing it
Posted by: jfr | September 16, 2011 at 05:48 PM