Scott Porad

Last summer, I wrote a popular post about 3 Lessons I Learned About Development While Raking the Yard with My Son.  Welcome back again to Lessons from the Yard, Volume II.

I used to make big plans for the yard.  On a sunny weekend day in the spring I’d be inspired to go to the garden store and buy all sorts of supplies.  An entire spring and summer’s worth of supplies.  Plants and flowers.  Soil and compost.  Tools and equipment.

Oh, how I love to buy tools and equipment!  Tools and equipment are the romance of the garden store.  Tools and equipment fill my heart with songs of possibility and joy.

But I digress…

I would spend lots of money, then go home and unload the car.  By now it was lunchtime, so I’d go inside for something to eat, then head back out to begin turning my big plans into reality.  After a few hours I would get lé tired, so I’d start wrapping up and be done with an afternoon’s work by around 5pm or so.

Everything seems to be okay, so then what’s wrong with this picture?

The answer is that I used only about 1/10th of the garden supplies I bought earlier in the day.  Now, in theory, I would use the remainder of the supplies over the course of the summer, but let’s be honest…we all know that isn’t what happens.  What happens is that the sad little garden supplies are shuffled off into the garage where they dream of being called off the bench one day to play in the big leagues.

Not only was this wasteful, but it made me feel awful too.  Looming over my head all summer was the work that remained to be completed; looming was the failure of not having completed my job.

So, now I do things differently: when I go to the garden store I only buy enough supplies for the work I can complete that day.

Yes, that means more trips to the garden store which some would view is less efficient, and efficiency is revered in our culture.  I think it’s worth the trade-off because the other side of efficiency is effectiveness and my new method is much more effective.

Obviously, it’s less wasteful.  I only buy what I need, and don’t end up putting a bunch of supplies in the garage that never end up getting used.  And, more importantly, it makes me happier.  Instead of feeling the weight of work that remains to be completed, I feel the satisfaction of a job completed.

Obviously, these lessons could be applied to the work world as well, and I’m not the first person to state them.  Pretty much, we’re talking Lean.  Like raking pine cones last year, it’s just nice to feel these experiences while digging in the dirt.