There’s a big tree that drops berries on the backyard at my parents house. In late July August, the berries flood the pool deck, the chairs, the tables. They land in the pool.
And that’s on a normal day. Throw in some wind and rain, and it’s a berry fest.
The berries are messy. They are a nuisance. They stain the umbrellas and the furniture. And it takes time and energy to clean them up.
It might only take 10 minutes a day, but that 10 minutes adds up.
It’s time and energy that could be better spent elsewhere.
The tree is on a neighbor’s property, so they can’t cut it down. But they are allowed to trim the branches that overhang their property.
So they did.
Well, not personally.
They hired a tree service. A man climbed up into the tree and cut down the branches that were hanging over my parents’ property.
The process was messy — a lot of berries landed with the branches. But that mess was cleaned up quickly. And now there have been a lot fewer berries dropping on the property. Less time and energy cleaning up someone else’s berries.
Why am I sharing this with you?
Because I’m a sucker for a good metaphor and this one is too good to pass up.
First, the obvious: if you want to effectively solve a problem, solve it as close to the cause as possible.
Second: somewhere in your life, there’s a tree dropping berries. You’re spending time and energy cleaning up the mess that’s landing on your property.
Likely you’re doing this at the expense of other activities that you could be doing with that time and energy.
Perhaps you’ve resigned yourself to cleaning up the mess because you know you can’t cut down the tree.
You may not be able to cut down the entire tree, but you can trim back the branches. Yes, you may need to invest resources to do that. And the process may be a little messy.
But it’s a one-time mess and an investment that will pay you back with more time and energy for what you actually want to do.
Where are you tolerating the mess created by someone else’s berry tree?
You can’t stop someone from growing a berry tree. But you can take action to keep the berries off of your property.
And, by the way, it’s possible that you might be actively shaking the tree to release the berries. But that’s another conversation.
to be effective
in cleaning messy berries
cut off the branches
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