What are you putting off?

There is real pressure in tougher years to put things on hold. 

I have some bunnings shelves in place of bookcases in my office and so little storage that things are all over the floor. 

I have been hesitating to do anything about it, stuck in this “let’s just be careful, it’s not a good year” mentality.

It’s happened before. We have put off trips, upgrades, work to the house. We put off a holiday to New Zealand in a campervan with our first little baby because it all seemed too hard and too expensive. Putting it off then made it harder and more expensive as we had more children and we never did it. 

It’s like a ‘make do and mend’ attitude will fix the gaping hole in our farm budgets, make up for lack of rain and skyrocketing input costs.

Well sorry, I have done the numbers and it won’t.

I have learned that it might make you feel a bit better in one way, but a lot worse in another. 

We are not the children of a sadistic rain god, our stoicism and suffering does not lead to better seasonal outcomes. 

The trips, the projects, the work around the house all take time as well as money. The planning that goes into infrastructure upgrades, new builds, renos and machinery purchases cannot be rushed. Lots of these things require really long wait times with suppliers and trades. We can’t put aside time from bad years to spend in the good. 

So what I am gently suggesting is a move away from the feast or famine mentality. I don’t think it’s healthy for me and it may not be for lots of you either. I’m trying to work toward a business as usual way of living and thinking. It does not mean we don’t change what needs doing to adapt to a season, or cease to enjoy good years, it’s trying to maintain a longer term perspective of life and business.

Now I get it. This is not relevant for everyone all the time. Sometimes things are soooo tight. Some years the stakes are high. Some of you are screaming at me through the screen, “you just don’t understand, you are there banging on about bookcases when I am fretting about kids shoes”.  I know. The cows keep bellowing and the sheep walk round all day on some ill-fated migration journey that never leads to better feed. The crops sown with overpriced inputs fail just as easily as the ones sown in the years when things were cheap. I really do get it. 

The message  is don’t stop dreaming, don’t stop planning, don’t stop doing what you can.