This summer I had the pleasure of spending a day helping my dad in his apple orchard, the task at hand - 60 apple trees to thin and only a few days to get it done. Though not my first time in the orchard, it was my first time thinning apples. After a brief explanation from my dad I set out on my own. The idea behind the task is to reduce the number of apples on the tree so the tree can use its energy to grow fewer, but larger apples. I learned a number of things about apples, but the greatest lessons taken away from this experience were the life lessons.
A number of the apples had brown spots on them from a spring that was way too abundant in rain. Those were easy to pull from the tree and place in the compost bin. The more difficult part was to pull perfectly beautiful apples off of the branch and toss them in the compost bin. I felt a tremendous sense of guilt in throwing away such potential. My dad reasoned that the tree can only produce so much energy and you have to pull the apples off that are too close to one another so that the tree can focus its energy and create better juicier apples.
Nature is a beautiful teacher and an amazing example. I began to see that each of those apples was like a project, idea or dream. Each apple was a perfectly good idea or intention that in and of itself had no real flaw, yet when I looked at that tree and all of its potential, it was easy to see that even the tree has a finite amount of creative energy. The tree simply can't produce enough energy to bring all of its "fruit" to maturity. It can either produce a plethora of small apples or if thinned properly, it can put its energy into producing fewer but more complete, more beautiful apples.
The lesson is SELECTION. We have 1000's of ideas, thoughts, tasks, and projects that inundate our lives. We spend hours of our time trying to produce good fruit in so many different areas that we exhaust our resources and end up feeling burned out and unsuccessful. The goal is to fine tune our output, to thin our lives so to speak, so we can truly perform well in the areas that are the most important to us. "But they are all important!", I can hear you yelling at me. We still have to choose. Our energy is finite and if we truly want to succeed we must accept that and FOCUS our ENERGY into the area that will provide the biggest crop for our businesses and our families.
A week ago I went back out to my dad's and picked boxes of big juicy apples that we pressed into cider. Now, sipping a hot cup of simmering cider I can tell you that things paid off in the end and amazingly there were plenty of apples for all!
Where in your life do you need to prune your output?
What are you pouring energy into but getting little in return?
Have you found yourself saying YES to things when you really mean NO?
What is the fruit of your current labor? How can you make it more productive AND reduce your energy output at the same time?
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