Add or remove for growth

[00:00:00] Well, hello! This is The Daily Five with Aurooba, that's me, where we reflect on creating our best lives a little bit every day. Here we go!

[00:00:15] You can either add something to make things different, or you can remove something to make something different. Sometimes you need to do both. In programming, the operator OR often means either or both. And that applies here as well. A few weeks ago, I either threw away or donated 17 shirts, the oldest of which I've had for the last 10 years. It was a favorite. It was also ratty, and I had repaired it like six times, I think, but it was time to let go. I got rid of, or removed, 17 shirts. I laid in my closet, and then I added back six new tops that I found over the next couple weeks that met my current needs. And that fits me better, and my life better.

[00:01:05] My spouse and I found ourselves relying on takeout a lot over the last few months. We are not big spenders, but takeout adds up really really fast. We sat down one day and crunched the numbers on a month of takeout, and the number was I think the best word is terrifying. It was terrifying. The very next day we went grocery shopping, removed the takeout and food delivery apps from our phones, and And things are feeling a lot better now a couple months later.

[00:01:34] It meant we had to adjust some parts of our lives that somehow had slipped out of control and made that takeout necessary, but that was good for us too. Our wallets feel better, but more importantly, our bodies feel better. We removed takeout and added cooking and food prep back in.

[00:01:54] As the daughter of people with green thumbs and as someone who has painstakingly developed a kinda sorta green thumb with a lot of trial and error, I understand the value of pruning, how removing excess and extra strengthens the core plant and creates a better outcome.

[00:02:14] We've repeatedly pruned our apple tree, and it has in turn given us more apples and a more beautiful to look at tree. I constantly have to prune the baby spider plants off of my spider plants because doing so makes the plant remain more strong. And then I can use the baby plants to make other plants or give them away or honestly sometimes I just compost them.

[00:02:37] The examples are endless. Removing, pruning the right stuff at the right time promotes healthy growth. Adding the right stuff at the right time can also have the same effect. For example, making sure my pothos gets nitrogen rich fertilizer in the spring to replenish the soil and help it grow better during the summer.

[00:02:56] Timing matters here too. Do the pruning or the adding too late, and it won't have the right effect, or enough of it. Too early, and the same thing goes. And, you know, timing can be hard, but if I had to lean more to one side of the equation than the other, I think I would err on the side of being a touch early, rather than being too late, maybe? Just in general. You know, providing that feedback early, providing the resources early, thinking about the consequences early on, etc. Too late is worse than too early, I think, in many scenarios that are coming to my mind. Because you can always go in again with the fertilizer, the feedback, or whatever, if you come in a bit too early, but Too late is, well, it's too late.

[00:03:47] I've been thinking a lot and pretty hard about this in a lot of arenas of my life, particularly work, I would say. I think we worry about timing so much or we worry about not going in too hard or not overwhelming others so much that we often wait too long before we provide the support or the resources or the information or the removal of things that are dragging a situation or plant down. And, as I'm thinking about it, at least when it comes to adding things, early is probably better. And when it comes to removing things, maybe a bit later is better. But I wouldn't want to go too late, even there. As a rule of thumb, anyway. So yeah, adding or removing. Both are good for growth. Both are sometimes needed together.

[00:04:39] Or you may need one more than the other, at some particular time.

[00:04:50] Thanks for listening. Same time tomorrow?