Regular Maintenance Pays

Whether you’re looking to paint a masterpiece, speak a foreign language fluently, meet financial goals, or grow a garden, the importance of regularity can’t be overstated.

Planting seeds in a garden is just the beginning. Over the seasons a garden requires a multitude of regular maintenance, including weeding and mulching flower beds, pruning back bushes, trimming trees, deadheading roses, and even feeding your lawn. Keeping your garden growing and thriving is what really makes you a gardener, not putting a few seedlings in the ground.

Consistent maintenance (aka regular deliberative practice) is critical to success.

Here are some thoughts on the subject from two smart bloggers writing about completely different topics – J.D. Roth of Get Rich Slowly, and Cairene MacDonald at Third Hand Works.

Constant, Low-Intensity  Maintenance

J.D. writes a popular blog about sensible personal finance called Get Rich Slowly based on the premise that “few people get rich quickly, but almost anyone can get rich slowly” by patiently doing certain things. Get Rich Slowly profiles readers who’ve paid down substantial amounts of debt, highlights ways to save sensibly, and talks a lot about the mental aspect of meeting long term financial goals.

Enter constant routine maintenance. You can’t know whether you’re on track to achieve your goals without it… In a post called The Rewards of Routine Maintenance, J.D. wrote about the parallels between gardening and personal finance.

Here is an excerpt (albeit, a long one):

“For several years, I stayed on top of things around Rosings Park (which is what we call our two-thirds of an acre). But about two years ago — just as Get Rich Slowly began to take over my life — I let things slide. I stopped pruning the hedges. I left tools outside to rust. I just stopped caring about the routine maintenance that had kept our home looking great.

I’m sure you can guess the results. Over the past two years, the yard has gone feral. The neighbor’s kiwi has mated with our oak. The filberts have developed shaggy manes. Blackberries are sending thorny shoots through every nook and cranny. And the laurels — well, the laurels have been jubilant in their self expression, exploding with twigs and leaves.

Though I’d known it in theory, the past two years have taught me that if you don’t keep up with routine maintenance, your home and yard can get away from you.”

“Taking care of your finances is very much like taking care of a yard. A few routine chores performed diligently are enough to help you keep things in line. But the moment you get lazy or distracted, things fall apart.

I’m ashamed to admit that over the past few months, my personal finances have come to resemble my yard. No, I’m not spending more than I earn, and I’m not abusing credit, but I am allowing financial weeds to grow where once I would have pulled them on sight.”

. . .

“And I’ve made a vow: In the coming years, I will not allow the yard to revert to jungle again. I’ll stay up-to-date on my chores. After all, there’s a sweet sense of satisfaction that comes from performing routine maintenance on anything. It’s nice to know that through constant low-intensity effort you’re able to keep things looking and running smoothly.”

As I type, the shrubs along my garage have gone without being trimmed for so long that they now resemble Einstein’s hair and completely block the motion sensor lights above them leaving my wild backyard in darkness, which has been fine by me. Taming my backyard is now a big job where it could have been easy through smaller, consistent effort. My problem is staying motivated to maintain these efforts.

Maintenance as a Sustaining & Grounding Force

Cairene at Third Hand Works helps independent creative professionals learn how to improve the administration of their businesses, emphasizing right-brain strategies so clients can succeed, but still be their creative selves. Her post called Lessons from a tired mind looks at these routine activities as an opportunity to recharge rather than a drain on resources.

“And being on a roller coaster makes it nearly impossible to engage in the maintenance activities that I find to be so stabilizing.  For me, maintenance activities – cleaning and laundry and cooking and dog walking and filing and whatnot – are the complex carbohydrates that keep me from crashing after the sugar highs. Maintenance normalizes things.

It wasn’t so much having such significant tasks on my to-do list that was so exhausting. It was how they squeezed out the seemingly less significant routine stuff that robbed me of small opportunities to recharge.”

A Routine Work In Progress

Maintenance isn’t a theme that we Americans hold in particularly high regard, myself included. We tend to opt for disposable over permanent since permanent requires maintenance.

Learning to bring my focus back to the goal at hand is something I struggle with. My attention and interest are routinely drawn to the shiny and new.

Consciously thinking about these activities as nurturing to my life has helped me realize that time spent maintaining is really an investment in the future. I’m not cured. It still takes real mental effort to remind myself of the rewards that come from building consistent, nurturing habits (financial, gardening, or otherwise) to ensure that I don’t neglect ongoing maintenance of the life I’ve built.  But, maybe it gets easier in time?!

Do you view these maintaining activities more as routine chores or as a stabilizing force? How do you stay the course when not moving toward a goal? Share tips or thoughts in the comments below.