Productive Produce

[Farm Thoughts - V]

It is so easy to be busy.

The world—your workplace, your home, the strip-mall, the gym, the rec league—promotes the mindlessness of packing our days with going from here to there, checking off inconsequential to-dos, picking up and dropping off Johnny at this or that thing, buying unnecessary stuff, and making little difference in the world.

(When’s the last time you asked someone how they were doing and they responded, “You know, I have plenty of downtime and I’ve taken up journaling”?)

Being productive, on the other hand, is not easy. It requires strategy, planning, and intentionality. It requires skill and know how. It requires self-understanding and discipline. Being productive, contrary to popular belief, is not being busy, but instead requires, first, un-busy-ing oneself, and then investing one’s time and resources well.

Productivity is about making, creating, bringing forth, raising up, stewarding.

It requires getting your hands dirty, sharpening your skills, and focusing your energies.

Every small-scale vegetable grower knows this to be true. Every step, every bed, every hour, every day matters. Just ask Ben Hartman. (Produce has the same Latin root as productivity, after all.)

It’s also true when producing a different future.

Stop being busy. Be productive.