What to Prune

Stress impacts everyone.

If you’re an age group athlete, stress hampers your recovery. Proper recovery is the key to your training having results. Here is a mental model to help you manage life stressors.

Your life is like a tree. Year after year, it grows new branches. Some are grown intentionally along a trellis. Some grow wild.

You are both the tree and the grower.

As the grower you help the tree flourish and produce fruit. Pruning helps the tree grow and trellising helps you.

We’ll start with pruning. There are two reasons to prune: to cut off dead or diseased branches and to promote growth.

Cut out disease

Some things are a net negative They may bring some pleasure but ultimately they are a drain. These are the diseases of your life.

Unhealthy habits, toxic relationships, dead end jobs, all are a huge drag on the rest of life.

Pruning is painful, but it is necessary for the health of the rest of your tree.

Grow

You only have so much time and energy. The wild tree will grow many branches that produce little fruit. To maximize fruit you need to be intentionally about where you spend your time.

Prune regularly to produce more fruit

Finding what to prune

How to know what to prune?

Start by keeping a journal. Write down what happened for the day. What you did. Your environment. What caused you stress? What caused you joy? Write down whatever is most relevant to your emotional state.

After a few weeks of writing, take some time to review. Look for your most common causes of stress and where you are wasting time. How can you eliminate these from your life?

Managing stress is key to leading a healthy, fulfilling life.

I’ll be going into this more the next several weeks, both in the newsletter and on Twitter.