The Agile Garden

How to follow success rather than chase it.

I am no Martha Stewart. I do not pretend to know the slightest thing about gardening, so if you’re looking for authentic tips on how to prune an avocado tree, then perhaps another site will do. What I can tell you is a set of truths learned by an eclectic array of skills collected over the years. I was a jazz piano major briefly before a real push into the music world. I have spent a good part of a decade attempting to get a start up off the ground. I have shifted over into the user experience universe. These might seem like completely different skills but they are all potential seeds in the garden of my own life. I’m going to attempt to combine these experiences to help you think about your own successes. What are the things that you should nurture? And what are the things that you should just let die?

Sometimes a lack of knowledge will serve you. It can serve you in the initial jolt of inspiration when the adrenaline kicks in and you say, “You know what? I’ll do that.” Had you known what you were getting yourself into, perhaps the decision making process would have been bogged down by the knowledge of how tedious the task really was. Nothing is quite as simple as it may initially appear. Deciding on a whim to tear up a section of the carpet can lead to an array of hidden projects just below the surface. I didn’t really plan on having a real garden- the kind made from intention, careful pruning, and in season planting. Tokyo never allowed a yard. Our condo in Washington held a communal backyard of grass mowed by the overpriced HOA landscaping service. When we moved to Tulsa a couple years ago, the real estate agent would often say, “Decent sized yard,” but to us, it was like owning farmland. There were the start or remains of a side deck that I dragged to the backyard and just filled with dirt. That was my garden. Experts would probably say that there was not enough depth of soil. They’d probably suggest a tin or metallic planter box instead, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to throw in some seeds and see if anything would pop up.

The first year, cucumbers were the hit. Out of everything planted- they shot up and I had to figure out how to let the vines climb on a trellis. My garden was built on odd pieces of wood I’d find lying around with different sized screws and nails. It wasn’t pretty but it was producing to my great surprise. I didn’t know the Tulsa weather, (and let’s be honest- I don’t think it knows itself). I’d chop up the cucumbers and my wife made homemade kimchi with it. I started a little compost box by grabbing a large storage bin, punching some holes in it, and then throwing our fruit and vegetable scraps in there. Every now and then, I’d also include some of the dead grass laying around the yard. Spring came for year two and I shoveled the now semi decomposed soil from the bin on top of the old soil now unfrosted by the longer days. It seemed like a decent thing to do to help the soil gain nutrients.

Days would pass and I’d open the blinds surprised to find greenery in the brown soil. I didn’t plant anything yet. I quickly realized that it was the assortment of compost placed on top and I smiled and called it my compost garden. I didn’t know what was growing. It would be a surprise and I kind of enjoyed the game of guessing. As days went by, one patch of greenery turned into a potato plant. Next to it produced a tomato plant. Within the wooden planter box produced large leaves that later multiplied into a jungle of pumpkins. I didn’t mind the pumpkins at first but as they stretched themselves into the lawn and made it known that they would be the main produce of my garden, I realized I didn’t even want pumpkin. What would I do with pumpkin? For all the real estate it took, it wasn’t something that I was dying to eat and so I ripped it all out.

And there was lesson one. Be sure to know what you want. It’s good to see something grow. We can even call that process. Yet we should often stop to evaluate whether the thing growing is the thing we want to take up the most space in our lives. Maybe that’s a job for you. You are doing well in your position and have continued to climb the corporate ladder with little effort. At the same time, you struggle with sleep and find yourself miserable in these positions. With each step up the ladder you find that you’re trading your time with an occupation that you never enjoyed. It was just something that you originally got into years ago through an internship connected to college. Now, the vines have taken root and spread all across your landscape and you have to ask… “When did I become a pumpkin farmer? I don’t even like pumpkins.”

After I had made the decision that I would not be a pumpkin farmer, it opened up fresh real estate. I planted more seeds. I had no idea if they were for the proper time, the proper climate, the proper shade, but I threw the assortment into the soil and left it all to surprise. It happened to be that the most fruitful produce out of everything was in fact the original compost seeds outside of the planter box which leads to lesson two. Don't ignore what’s outside the box. Have a macro point of view when it comes to creating. If you are rigid and unable to think outside the perimeters of what you’re doing, then you might miss the most fruitful product of your endeavors. Maybe you even rip out the thing that wasn’t supposed to be there. Many of the world’s most incredible inventions came by accident. Let yourself produce unintended miracles.

The tomato plant might as well been sprinkled with steroids as it shot up to unmanageable heights. I scrambled to find extra pieces of wood to keep it upright. It began to resemble a thick wall that could protect our house from the most formidable intruder. A rabbit found refuge underneath its giant vines. It happened that the thing I never intended to be became the pride of my garden and this leads to lesson number three. Sometimes the things we don’t plant are the most fruitful in our lives. It’s important to allow life shape us, and as cliche as it may be, to move like water. Sometimes we cannot force our way to the desired area that we’d like to be in. Sometimes we have to take the path that is offered to us. This may seem like it conflicts with lesson one but I love tomatoes. By ripping out the thing I didn’t want, it made room for the thing I did want. We should make room to adapt, to grow, and to be a little more agile.

So what does this have to do with jazz, with user experience, with start ups? Maybe you’re more prone to classical music. The musical notes are painted on the page to be played with little room for interpretation. You either play it right or you don’t whereas jazz has the melody, the chord charts, and an endless form of imagination as to how that tune is to be played. You play off the melody, outside the box, and follow the music to its own conclusions based upon the flow. Similar with user experience, you lay your assumptions aside as to how the user would use the product designed. The box was meant for the plants but the fruit was outside of it. And for start ups? Well, I suppose it would be the combination of both- that we must be agile enough to see where the fruit is coming from. We may have intended to solve one problem, but we end up solving a whole other problem along the way. Adapt, grow, and be a little more agile.

jLM