{"id":117,"date":"2009-03-26T22:56:40","date_gmt":"2009-03-27T02:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/?p=117"},"modified":"2009-03-26T23:21:18","modified_gmt":"2009-03-27T03:21:18","slug":"117","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/26\/117\/","title":{"rendered":"I like money. I like tomatoes, too."},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>\u00a0gestures broadly and says \u201cnot everybody would \u2018get\u2019 this.\u201d<\/p>\n

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!)\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Brett is right, most people can\u2019t conceive of why I\u2019d 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\u2019t get this either. Why do I do it?<\/p>\n

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 \u201chow much I\u2019m worth an hour if I were doing something productive.\u201d But the truth is: that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019ve got about ten big ones across the porch) visiting with your friends. In fact, that\u2019s one of the best places to sit and talk with God. It\u2019s also a good place to think.<\/p>\n

Have you just sat quietly and done any thinking lately? What about talking to God? What about visiting with a friend? I won\u2019t even ask where your bacon came from.<\/p>\n

Dan Sullivan<\/a>\u00a0Founder of Strategic Coach\u00a0(if you\u2019ll contact them they\u2019ll 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\u2019s a nice balance of life and work.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have this subject all figured out yet, so I\u2019m 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 \u201cnot getting it\u201d I promptly replied, \u201cYeah, I like money. But I like homegrown tomatoes, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Take the day off. Go stick a shovel in the dirt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0gestures broadly and says \u201cnot everybody would \u2018get\u2019 this.\u201d It was a beautiful Spring day; the horses were grazing in the South pasture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22,6,20,21,15,19],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-balance","tag-business","tag-leisure","tag-productivity","tag-success","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}