I am not a gardener, but as I understand it, if you don’t tend to the garden, it will get overgrown and cumbersome. Weeds will kill the real plants you are trying to cultivate.

If you don’t take care of things, they will start to accumulate. Suddenly, you have hundreds of emails, jobs that are half-finished, a book pile, a to-read pile, and simple tasks that have been put off for far too long.

The garden gets overrun.

What I’m going to try and do this year is block out time to clear things out and tend the garden.

Review work and personal email and start cleaning it out at the end of the day.

I’m going to have to spend some time just getting to inbox zero, but once I’m there I’m going to try and stay there.

Review my Instapaper queue and start cleaning it out or archiving.

I am terrible about using my read-later queue as a catch-all. It needs some curating.

Spend an hour at the end of the day to take care of all the little things both personal and work-related.

I’m terrible at this and just making the list of things to do is not enough. I need to take action.

Plan chores and errands for the weekend.

Not having a to-do list on the weekend just means things don’t get done.

These four steps aren’t hard. They might take a few hours at most. What I need to do is a plan and then follow through. My days are incredibly busy, and carving out time to do what needs to be done to make things go smooth in my household and work is vital.

I admire focus in other people but lack it in myself. Setting myself up for success by focusing on the tasks at hand is also vital.

Clear out the weeds. Tend the garden. Make my life easier for myself.