Hustle culture has been telling us for years to “Just Do It.” (Also shoe companies. And capitalism.) Just race blindly towards whatever the goal. Grow grow grow!
And the feeling that we constantly need to be pushing ourselves outward and pressing for more —growing— has become a wound.
It makes it impossible to be peaceful or happy where we are.
But when you are growing plants (much like growing humans, creativity, businesses), there is a time for everything.
When you’re growing tomatoes, (shockingly) the goal is to end up with tomatoes. Just having big, leafy plants doesn’t do you much good.
And likewise, when we’re writing or building a business, our goal is to make a piece of work that increases understanding, connection, and earns us a living. That is the fruit.
But if you favor raw growth over healthy growth, you compromise the fruit.
How to Screw Up Tomatoes
Out of twelve tomato plants this year, I’m looking at about 7 tomatoes so far. Leaves are turning yellow; flowers are falling off instead of making baby tomatoes.
It’s my overeager fault.
There are 5 unexpected ways trying to “help things grow” can kill them.
And they are just as true for building a body of creative work that pays you (the fruit) as it is for tomatoes.
1) Too Much, Too Soon.
You would think you just put tomatoes in the ground, and they grow, but no.
It’s cold where I live, so I have to start them inside in pots. They grow for months indoors before they’re ready for the cold nights in the garden.
But inside, there is a constant tug-of-war between the limited space in my kitchen under the grow lights and how big of a pot the tomatoes need.
If I start them in huge pots, there’s not room for any of the other seedlings I need to grow in the garden. And the tiny sprouts just sit there in a huge swathe of dirt, for weeks…
…providing a tempting landing zone for the enormous velociraptor backsides of my cats, who love the grow lights as much as the tomatoes.
Likewise, in creative work we need to keep a balance between giving time to the creative work and taking care of the rest of the things growing in our lives.
If you spend all day writing but no time thinking, learning, eating, exercising, paying attention to your cat, paying bills… your creative life will be squashed by the ensuing, untended problems.
We have to keep the balance to stay working for the long haul. Creative work is not a sprint.
You also need to focus on one small place to start – a blog, a Substack, a newsletter. Trying to do too many complicated things will overwhelm you before you can grow into them.
2) Safe Smallness Can Suffocate.
On the other hand, if you start tomatoes in small pots (to keep them safe and fit them nicely into the rest of your busy life), you absolutely have to pot them up to a bigger space as soon as they’re ready.
If they get too big in a small pot, the roots start growing around in a circle and become a knot that the plant can’t undo later. They’re root-wrapped and can’t reach out to take in nutrients or develop a bigger, stabler stem.
The remedy is to carefully pull or cut apart the roots later when you plant them, so they have a chance of growing out in the right direction. But this is traumatic. It can kill the plant or stunt it for the whole growing season.
Likewise, if our creative life is tucked safely into a tiny corner of our life, eventually we are going to want more. Staying small and scared, we develop coping skills to suck all the nutrients out of our little corner – but then we have to go through this traumatic process of breaking apart those unhealthy coping mechanisms later, and it can stunt us for years.
Keeping up a creative practice and keeping some of your roots in deeper, more meaningful work can help sustain you. But eventually you’ll need to face fears of visibility or inadequacy to “pot up” – to reach the sustenance of a bigger audience and making things that connect.
It’s better to start sharing publicly somewhere while you’re still small to build those healthy roots, so you don’t get stuck in smallness and invisibility later.
3) The Wrong Rocket Boost.
You would think more plant food equals healthier plants. Not so.
Nitrogen gives plants a big burst of growth – they’ll develop huge leaves. But too much nitrogen can burn and kill the plant. Even a bit too much interrupts the flowering process. So you get tons of leaves with almost no flowers or fruit.
Likewise, sometimes all the pressure to learn a ton of info, use a new framework, or dance for followers can help give you exactly what you need to boost your growth.
But supercharging growth in the wrong way can end up exhausting you. You end up putting on a ton of new growth, but it doesn’t lead to any fruit you want. No sales or dedicated readers… just empty, disinterested numbers on a dashboard.
The medicine is to collect followers and frameworks that you can apply as you go. Make sure you’re using it for things that do bring fruit, rather than getting bloated with too much of what doesn’t.
4) Get Nutrients As You Need Them.
Apparently, too much phosphorus and calcium can interrupt the uptake of other key nutrients.
That was my mistake this year. I put in a little too much bone meal, and I have tomatoes with very healthy stems, but yellowing leaves and flowers that fall off instead of turning into baby tomatoes.
Likewise, as we build creative work – it’s easy for us to take in too much advice, too much strategy, and lose touch with all the nutrients we need to grow and our compass toward what works best for us.
It’s essential to stay in touch with things like what you love, your joy, your curiosity, your intuition. Too much clever advice blocks us from what we need most. Our internal guidance system. So our fruit ends up growing out hollow and rotten.
The resolution is to take advice and education in measured doses. As you learn, apply it, and feel it in your body. Do an intuition check-in. Does this feel right? Why or why not? What does?
5) Too Much Growth in the Wrong Season Kills.
This one has confused me many times in the past, especially when my kids were babies. While I desperately wanted to do creative work, I didn’t have two brain cells to rub together most days.
If you fertilize some fruit trees in fall, they will end up having a huge burst of new growth right before the winter freeze. Not only is the plant at risk for having all its new growth die off, but the strain can kill the whole plant.
The lesson is, some seasons are hard, and if you’re in one, it’s okay to stay alive in the roots. Keeping your new growth compact might be exactly what you need for creative survival. And that can mean NOT learning constantly. Just keeping a little blood flowing.
It’s okay to lay fallow sometimes. It’s okay to take breaks. It’s okay to rest, and let whole, damaged branches die off, so that you can come back next spring and focus on something where the creative sap is flowing clean.
Nature Is Better at Growth than We Are
Nature is an expert in growth. It has a few million years of experience on hustle culture gurus.
And it reminds us that, if you want to see the fruit of your creative labors, the environment, dose, and timing of your growth all matter.
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Tend your creative work consistently, but keep it in balance with the rest of your life for long-term endurance.
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Challenge yourself gently but regularly with more exposure, more space, and new challenges so you don’t get crimped.
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Don’t overdose on growth hacks, tools, tricks, or advice – make sure you apply what you learn as you go.
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Everything has a season. Let your creativity move in cycles, sometimes more, sometimes less. Sometimes you need to let go of something that is no longer serving you. Sometimes it means taking quiet time to focus on your roots.
But don’t stop being creative, and don’t stop growing. Spring comes after every winter.
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