Seasons: Planting and Harvesting

A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of recognizing the seasons as we pursue our dreams. There are many seasons in life.  As we walk into our dreams, there are some seasons that we should become familiar with - like planting and harvesting, building up and tearing down, and holding on and letting go.  This week I am going to focus on planting & harvesting. 

When you have a dream but you have very little to work with, that is a sign that you need to invest in planting and harvesting. The purpose of planting and harvesting is to bring about growth and multiplication to move forward into your dream. 

"Planting and harvesting is the right strategy for small beginnings."

Let's break this down into four steps and make it practical:

1) Planting and harvesting begins with seed - something with the potential to grow, and soil - an environment for the seed to grow. There is no point in entering the growing season without seed and somewhere to plant it. If you are not sure what these are, you need to look to see what is at hand. Chances are, everything you need for your first planting, even if it is small, is already at hand.

Here is an example of seed and soil from my experience. As I was looking at starting The Daniel Mosaic, what I wanted to do was help people put the pieces of their dream together. The seed was my thoughts and experience with strategy. The soil was the blog and my network of friends, family and colleagues.

2) Once you have seed and somewhere to plant it, the ground need to be prepared  for planting. At this stage, it is easy to dream of the benefits of harvest and ignore the hard work of preparing the ground and planting the seed. Remember, what you plant is what you can expect eventually to harvest. This is true both in what you plant (when you plant wheat, you will harvest wheat, not corn) and in the quantity (if you plant one field, you will harvest one field, not five).  

At this stage you need to evaluate how much time and effort you have spent preparing for the success of what you have to plant. Some questions to ask yourself:

How much research and planning have you done? Have you written it down?

Have you sought out meaningful feedback from others?

Have you tested your idea, looking at it from different perspectives?

How much have you practiced?

Is the timing right?

Do not be deceived, what you sow, that you will reap. 

3) In between the planting and the harvesting, there is always a delay. What we have planted needs time to germinate, to grow and to mature (remember what we learned about growth curves). It may also need tending. This delay can be frustrating to those who are expecting fast results. Just like different species of plants take different amounts of time to go from germination to being mature, so it will be with your dream. 

One of the key opportunities during this time of waiting and tending is to plant a range of seeds, like empty containers, so there are more chances to see what will succeed. Consider what ideas will support what you have already planted. Are there actions that you can take that will strengthen the success of what you have already started?

4) Finally, there comes the harvest season.  The key thing about the harvest season is to be prepared for how much has grown and to pay attention to timing. If you have spent time preparing the ground, planting and tending, then you should also invest in preparations to reap the results. There is often only a short window of time to benefit from what you have planted. You need to be watching for it.  

Heritage tomatoes from our garden. Photo: Heart's Ease & Thyme

One unexpected thing about the harvest is how much work it is. I experienced this when I became responsible for applying for grants at one of my positions.   At first I thought that the hardest thing would be getting the money, so I spent a lot of time developing a grants strategy and writing solid grant applications. I soon learned that it was relatively easy to get money for good projects. What caught me off guard was how much work it was to administer the grants program after being awarded the money. I spent much more time with funding agreements, communications, reporting and audits than I spent preparing to get the money.

I see a lot of people who have a good idea. Some of them take the next step and do a reasonable job preparing the ground and planting at first, but give up halfway through the growing season. What I don't see very often are people who see the whole season through. The results may not be spectacular the first season, but those people have positioned themselves for the next season of planting and harvesting to be even better.