How do you prioritize what is important to you? How do you ensure you do not get overwhelmed by the unimportant and have enough energy for what truly matters?

When considering how to spend your time, envision your life as a tree. Consider all the activities you want to do or could do and divide them into two categories: branches and roots.

Branches represent the visible and meaningful goals in your life. These include having a career, hobbies, and a family, each of which can have smaller branches stemming from them. For instance, your hobby can be fishing or photography. These can be further subdivided, with leaves representing individual tasks such as purchasing equipment, having lengthy conversations with friends about fishing, or the actual act of fishing. The ultimate result is the fruit – the satisfaction the activity brings.

Then there are the roots, the underlying foundation or basic framework upon which everything else is built. These are the invisible tasks done in the background for the branches and leaves to thrive. It encompasses everyday routines like going to work, cleaning your house, maintaining equipment, paying bills, taking care of your health, and nurturing relationships. This is akin to buildings. Your aim may be to have a cozy home (the fruit) with a comfortable bed, running water, heat, and electricity. This requires strong foundations, proper plumbing, and wiring to make it all function. Neglecting the roots will prevent you from enjoying the fruit.

• Roots are the basic building blocks essential for your survival; they represent duties and responsibilities necessary to maintain your life. The trunk symbolizes the main path of your life from which various roles and goals emerge.
• Branches represent the main roles and goals of your life; they may have smaller branches growing out of them.
• Leaves refer to individual tasks that lead to completing activities and goals.
• Fruit signifies the final finished goal; it represents the results of your labor that you truly enjoy and cherish.

“The time and effort spent creating and maintaining roots can be significant, but it is critical for long-term success and well-being. Ignoring the foundation means you are building your life on shaky grounds, and it can collapse at the first sign of adversity.”

The lack of this fundamental understanding of how the world works often leads to people living beyond their means, investing in branches with fruit without having the income to maintain the roots.

It also leads to unmet expectations in relationships, as people desire to reap the benefits of having someone who cares about them and helps them (the fruit) without investing in nurturing the relationship and making the sacrifices it often requires (the roots).

The time and effort spent on creating and maintaining roots can often be significant. It can be tedious and tiring, yet it is critical for long-term success and well-being. Ignoring the foundation will mean you are building your life on shaky grounds, and it can collapse at the first sign of adversity. More than half of your time can be spent creating and maintaining the roots, which is just fine. What may help is to reframe some of the roots-related work as being branches or even fruit. For example, you may take the task of maintaining roots, such as cooking a meal for sustenance, and turn it into a hobby or a creative endeavor that can become fruit in its own right.

How does this relate to your career?

All of this has an interesting impact on your career in two important ways.

First, you may want to pursue your dream job or life calling, but when it doesn’t sustain you, you are going to fail. Let’s say it is your dream to write a book. Yet, it is clear that you won’t make any money by doing that. Writing a book is a passion. To be able to do so and survive, you need a stable job that will pay your bills and support your livelihood. You end up having your day job while spending your evenings and weekends writing. I am talking about myself, though many writers start this way too.

Second, you may want to achieve everything immediately, and it won’t work. It is great to have aspirations and to want to move up the career ladder fast. But if you don’t build the basic skills, competence, and character, your career will stand on wobbly legs.

Trying to find shortcuts without paying attention to the basics often leads to short-term success but long-term failure and misery. Get back to basics and take care of the roots. Only then can you flourish.

What is your experience with doing the groundwork and maintaining the roots versus focusing on the more interesting fruit? Where do you spend more time? What brings you more satisfaction? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

---

Photo: Generated by DALL-E

If you enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing to get notified whenever I publish new stories or check out my book Quiet Success: The Introvert’s Guide To A Successful Career