I was sitting on the porch (my specialty) drinking a Diet Coke and resting a bit from an intense few hours getting my garden in shape for Spring, when my friend Brett Godfrey gestures broadly and says “not everybody would ‘get’ this.”

It was a beautiful Spring day; the horses were grazing in the South pasture and the goats were frolicking in the front paddock. This is life as it was meant to be. (Deep good sigh!) 

But Brett is right, most people can’t conceive of why I’d be sitting here in muddy boots and Big Smith overalls with an aching back when an hour in my office working in the area of my unique ability would generate more revenue than my family will spend on vegetables in an entire year. Maybe I don’t get this either. Why do I do it?

Balancing work and leisure (yes, the garden is a leisure activity—-some people play golf, some people move rocks and dig in dirt—–both cause sweat) is an ongoing struggle for entrepreneurs. Nearly every day that I pause to play I find my mind drifting to “how much I’m worth an hour if I were doing something productive.” But the truth is: that’s weak thinking. Strong thinking realizes that life is about life, and work is just a tool to support life, and most importantly—leisure is productive.

Life is found in the simple pleasure of eating bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches when the pork came from your farm, and the lettuce and tomato grew in your garden. (In trying economic times there’s a certain confidence that comes from experiencing a meal that you grew totally on your place—slow food instead of fast food.) Life is in sitting on the porch in a rocking chair (yeah, we’ve got about ten big ones across the porch) visiting with your friends. In fact, that’s one of the best places to sit and talk with God. It’s also a good place to think.

Have you just sat quietly and done any thinking lately? What about talking to God? What about visiting with a friend? I won’t even ask where your bacon came from.

Dan Sullivan Founder of Strategic Coach (if you’ll contact them they’ll send you a free CD on the entrepreneurial time system) has taught me that in order to be most productive on what he calls Focus Days, I need to have a commensurate amount of Free Days in my schedule. A Free Day is a 24 hour time period where you do nothing related to work. Many of my friends in Strategic Coach have over 100 Free Days a year. That’s a nice balance of life and work.

I don’t have this subject all figured out yet, so I’m mostly just musing aloud. Though I am discovering that the more time I take off, and the more relaxed I am, the more productive I am on my Focus Days, and the more money I make. When Brett commented about people “not getting it” I promptly replied, “Yeah, I like money. But I like homegrown tomatoes, too.”

Take the day off. Go stick a shovel in the dirt.