Picture a garden where every seed you’ve ever bought has been thrown into the same small bed. Tomatoes, roses, herbs, and weeds are all competing for light, water, and space. On paper, it looks full of life. In reality, nothing really thrives.

That’s how many of us run our work and our lives. We keep adding new projects, new tools, new habits, new responsibilities. But the bed is the same size.

Not everything can grow. If you want something new to grow, you either have to weed, or you need a bigger bed or field.

Weeding means removing things so that something more important gets room. In practical terms, that might be projects, routines, or commitments that no longer make sense. Ask yourself: What am I maintaining just because it already exists? What do I keep “watering” that never really grows?

Some typical candidates for weeding are old projects no one has dared to end, reports that nobody reads, recurring meetings without a clear purpose, or side ideas that never become real priorities. Useful questions are: If we stopped this for a month, who would notice? Would I start this today, knowing what I know now?

A simple way to weed is:

• Make a list of your current projects and recurring commitments
• Mark what to keep, what to question, and what to remove
• Decide what to stop, what to pause, and what to delegate
• Communicate clearly what you are ending and why

Weeding is not about doing nothing. It is about choosing what really gets space, so that something new and important can grow.

The other option is to make the bed or field bigger. Sometimes the problem is not that you are growing the wrong things, but that everything is squeezed into too little space. The existing “plants” are healthy and important, but they are limited by capacity.

In practice, expanding the field can mean adding people or skills, improving tools and workflows, or using language models and other agents to take over repetitive or supporting tasks. It can also mean redesigning your schedule, creating more focused time, and reducing constant context switching.

You should think about expanding when your priorities are clear, the work is reasonably well organized, and it still feels like there is more demand than you can meet. If cutting further would mean giving up things that really matter, it may be time to make the field bigger instead of pulling out more plants.

There are risks in expanding too fast. If you add capacity without clear priorities, you just grow the chaos. More people and more tools can create more coordination problems. To avoid that, it usually makes sense to weed a bit first, then expand carefully.

Choosing between weeding and expanding starts with a few honest questions: Are the things you are growing actually worth growing? Are you really at capacity, or just disorganized? Do you have the resources to expand in a sustainable way?

A useful habit is a short, regular “garden review.” Once a week, look at what you are working on: What is growing well? What is struggling? What is choking something else? Then choose one thing to remove or reduce, and one thing to give a bit more space and attention. Small adjustments, done regularly, are more powerful than a big clean-up once a year.

The core idea is simple: not everything can grow. If you do not choose what gets space, it will be chosen for you, often by noise, habit, or random requests. By weeding with intention, or by deliberately making the bed or field bigger, you give the right things a real chance to grow.