Leverage Your Have-To’s
I don’t know if you are like me (I’m hoping desperately that you are and I’m not on my own in this failing), but I often have numerous things that I would love to do, unfortunately, they fall victim to the Have-To’s. I want to do A, but I have to do B, so B gets done and A doesn’t. Not that getting the Have-To’s done is a bad thing, it would just be lovely if the Want-To’s could get done with regularity too! Well, the other day I happened upon an interesting combination of circumstances that gave me an idea, a potentially life altering strategy: what if we leveraged our Have-To’s to enable our Want-To’s?
Here’s the story…
We have our awesome little mustang filly, Grace, and I’ve wanted to go out and work with her every day, but…life! I’m on the team in charge of chores for the upper animal pens: feeding the un-bred ewes, milking Autumn, feeding the cows, feeding the rams, making sure everyone has water…. By the time I get all of that done, I am generally feeling pressure to head inside and get busy with all of the other responsibilities of the day. Maren takes care of Grace, so it’s not essential that I get down there, but I WANT-TO! Unfortunately, too often the pressure of the Have-To’s means that I don’t make it down to work with Grace. Sigh!!!!
This week, my parents came up to install a new hot water heater (that is a whole other story!!!), and brought Sugar, our big Percheron/Saddlebred girl, with them. Sugar is our old lady, and, as such, needs some soaked old lady food every day. Guess who adopted the chore of feeding Sugar her old lady food? Yep, me! That may seem like an extra burden, but you know what I noticed? The Have-To of feeding Sugar, puts me right down by Grace, and since Sugar came home, I haven’t missed a single day of interacting with Grace. In fact, I’ve interacted with her twice a day!!! The circumstance of the proximity of one of my Have-To’s with one of my Want-To’s, means I get both of them done.
That happy result made me think. I wonder if we could do that strategically? Is it possible to intentionally link Have-To’s with Want-To’s so that both get done?
There is a principle in Permaculture design called zones. It’s a principle of proximity. There are some things that need to get done every day, and there are some things that need to get done once a year (or once every couple of years), and there’s a whole gamut of things in the middle. When you’re laying out your farm, or landscaping, you put the things that need to get done every day in areas that you already naturally go to every day. That is your Zone 1. Do you walk to your car every day to go to work (one of those Have-To’s)? Then plant the zucchini that needs to be harvested every day right along that path. Voila! You will harvest your zucchini on time and you won’t end up with an abundance of enormous monstrosities. Then you place the Zone 2 things pretty close, the Zone 3 things a bit further out, etc.
In real life functionality, I think we relegate our Want-To’s to Zone 3, 4, or 5, and then feel frustration or discouragement when we don’t get them done. Maybe we should try moving them up right by Have-To’s. Move them into Zone 1. Then, because we already have to be there doing our Have-To’s, we’ll also be able to harvest our Want-To zucchini’s. It’s like magic!!!
Now I just need to figure out if I can leverage the same principle to get some of my Need-To-but-Really-Don’t-Want-To things done too: like taxes!!! LOL!!!!!
Keep up the good work, you are doing great things!!!
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