Right now, my backyard is a mess of green. Tomatoes are climbing past the top of their cages. Squash sprawling into territory I never gave it permission to take. Peppers and eggplant are coming in steady. Potatoes are doing their quiet, invisible work underground until the day I finally dig them up and get surprised all over again.
It’s thriving. And it might be my happiest place on earth.
I didn’t expect a vegetable garden to teach me much about leadership or productivity. I started it because I wanted an excuse to get outside, move my body and feel the sun on my face after a day of calls and coaching sessions. But a few seasons in, I’ve realized my garden has quietly become one of my best teachers.
Nothing grows without a plan
Before a single seed went into the ground, I had to plan. What goes where? How much sun each plant needs. How much space do tomatoes need before they start choking out the peppers next to them? Nothing about a productive garden is accidental — it’s the result of decisions made weeks before anything visible happens.
That’s true of anything worth building. The people I coach who feel most behind, most overwhelmed, most “busy but not productive,” are rarely lacking effort. They’re lacking a plan. They’re reacting to whatever’s loudest instead of working from something they laid out in advance.
A garden without a plan is just weeds with potential. A week without a plan is just hours that happen to you.
Discipline beats motivation, every single time
Some mornings, I do not want to go outside and water. It’s hot, I’m tired and I already have three things competing for my attention before 8 a.m. I water anyway.
That’s the part nobody tells you about growing something: it has nothing to do with how you feel that day. The tomatoes don’t care that you’re busy. The squash doesn’t wait for you to feel inspired. You show up because the plan requires it, not because you’re in the mood.
This is the single biggest gap between people who reach their goals and those who talk about theirs. It’s not talent. It’s not even time, most of the time. It’s the willingness to do the unglamorous, repetitive work on the days you don’t feel like it.
Focus means saying no to what’s not the priority
Left alone, my squash plant would take over the entire bed. Left unchecked, weeds would choke out everything I actually want to grow. Part of tending a garden is constant, small acts of protection — pulling out what doesn’t belong so the things that matter have room to grow.
Your calendar works the same way. Every “yes” to something unimportant is a “no” to something that actually deserves your attention — a strategic project, a relationship, your own health. Focus isn’t really about adding more. It’s about the discipline to clear out what’s crowding the thing you actually care about.
Care is a daily practice, not a one-time event
You don’t plant a garden and walk away for two months. You show up. You check on it. You notice when something’s off — a leaf curling, soil too dry, a pest moving in — and you address it before it becomes a bigger problem.
Leadership works the same way. Teams, relationships, even our own well-being — none of it runs on autopilot. It requires the same kind of ongoing, attentive care a garden demands. Not dramatic gestures. Just consistent presence.
The harvest is the reward for patience you didn’t always feel like having
There is nothing — nothing — like walking outside, picking a tomato you planted yourself and eating it right there in the yard. It tastes different than anything from a store. It tastes like the watering you didn’t feel like doing — the weeding you did anyway. The weeks of nothing visible happening before, suddenly, everything did.
That’s the part that makes all the discipline worth it. Not the daily grind itself, but what the daily grind eventually produces — for a garden, and for a career, a team, a life.
My garden is also just my happy place
Beyond every lesson, here’s the simplest truth: gardening makes me happy. It gets me outside. It gets me moving. It gets my hands in the dirt instead of on a keyboard, and my eyes on growing things instead of a screen. For an hour or two, there’s no inbox. No notifications. Just quiet, physical, satisfying work.
I think everyone needs a version of that — a happy place that pulls them outside of the daily grind and into something that restores them. For me right now, it’s tomatoes, squash and more peppers than I know what to do with.
The real question: Do you have time for yours?
Here’s what I’ve noticed, both in my own life and in the leaders I coach: the busiest people are often the ones furthest from their garden — literally or figuratively. The hobby they used to love. The people they keep meaning to call. The break they keep telling themselves they’ll take once things calm down.
Things rarely calm down on their own. It takes intention.
If you’re working hard but can’t remember the last time you got to your version of the garden, that’s usually not a time problem. It’s a systems problem — a lack of clarity around where your hours are actually going and what’s crowding out what matters most.
I built a free Leadership Productivity Assessment to help you find exactly that: where your time is leaking, what’s stealing your focus and how to get more intentional so you can free up real time — for your work, and for the things and people you love.
Because at the end of the day, the goal was never just to be busy. It was to build something worth harvesting.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
____________________________________
Take advantage of SmartBrief’s FREE email newsletters on leadership and business transformation, among the company’s more than 250 industry-focused newsletters.