What gets attention grows; what gets neglected withers

It’s an incredibly simple concept, but it’s shocking how often we forget.

If you have several plants in your garden and you spend all your energy and time tending only half of them, it’s likely those plants will thrive while the neglected ones will not. I reminded a client of this last week.

It was a metaphor, of course. She did not have an actual garden. Do not hire me to help you with your garden. As you learned last week, I’m more a meadow guy.

With this client, it could have been professional contacts, personal projects, healthy habits, or any number of things. The ones you spend time on are going to thrive, and the ones you neglect are going to atrophy.

In her case, it was job skills. She saw herself moving into management eventually, and she was unsure whether she wanted to pursue advancement in her current project management role or try to move back into development, where she had been a few years ago.

We talked about what accomplishments and skills would move her toward her goal of getting into management, and how each of those options would serve or hinder her.

Through this discussion, we uncovered that she was falling back on the comfortable things she had already mastered, not the growth things she needed for advancement. With this realization, she made a decision and got excited about creating a plan.

It’s a remarkably simple concept, and one I did not invent. But it’s important to remember it from time to time.

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