First thing is first, I am going to start with the disclaimer: this is not a post about gardening.

I like being outdoors, I feel in my own element but gardening is taking skills which unfortunately I don’t have at the moment! Because, in all honesty, I am investing my time in other projects,

So now that this is out of the way you are probably wondering why I chose this title for the blog post. Well, first time when I said to someone that I am like a “Constant Gardener” it was in an interview. It felt like a good way to describe myself on the job. I work as a software engineer and live systems are like gardens, they grow in time, they need constant attention and fixing. If you are not careful the weeds of bad and unmaintainable code are taking over.

With all the rush of the world and the abundance of information everywhere I feel like being a constant gardener, always trimming and choosing, always prioritising, has become more and more important. I started to filter all the information that jumps at me from all screens at once because it has become unmanageable. I just cannot find the quality anymore, is lost in huge quantities of information. There is no such thing anymore as enjoying a message from a friend. The phones are full of messages all the time. Finding something good to watch is incredibly hard, immense amount of gardening and cutting weeds is needed right there.

I am minimalistic by nature, I have always been. But what I have been realising lately is that my minimalistic lifestyle doesn’t really extend only to possessions, I am becoming more and more restrained when it comes to social media, online resources and the amount of information I want. I don’t want to spend a lot of time in constantly trimming through news and content and other people’s endless need to express opinions. I love to read and I love to listen, but I am constantly needing to plough through too much content. I want more offline quality time so I came up with a few strategies that helped me a lot and I thought I would share them with you.

1. Choose your top interest and build a list of top sources for each of them

I know that I don’t have time to research every interest I have so I picked about 3 things that I constantly want to read about. I read about tech, writing and travelling. I have a short list of magazines and blogs that I follow, articles that have always provided value for me. I built my own list of trusted sources. If I have some downtime I go to my reading list instead of spending endless hours scrolling through pages.

2. On social media pick your network based on interests

I only use LinkedIn really and I only follow people that post articles I am interested in. I also use it to keep in touch with former colleagues and find interesting jobs. I don’t want to spend my time looking at what everyone else is doing and what they are posting, I probably can find the time but I can definitely not find the energy for it. To keep in touch with all my close friends I really don’t use social media, I prefer to meet them face to face, or in those times, sometimes we have video calls.

3. Focus on producing content not only absorbing content

When there is so much content you can choose from it’s easy to spend a lot of time focused on it but the truth is that everything slows down when you are trying to create some yourself. For example when I am writing everything stops around me, I have time to really process things and internalise. Creativity involves reflection. I found that many times I just read things but don’t allow myself the time to process. Whatever you like to do, whether is writing, painting, designing, you give yourself the thinking time that we all need. Many times creating one thing in a totally different field than my job helps me find solutions at work. Because I slow down so much so that everything becomes clearer.

This is how I manage to keep a good balance and spend much more time offline rather than online. I am constantly trying to find a pace for my life that I am happy with. I will keep on gardening!