Phaedra
Garden Addicted
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2021
- Messages
- 3,074
- Reaction score
- 15,633
- Points
- 245
- Location
- Schleiden, Germany USDA 8a
New thread, new chapter, happy to be back.
I might not be a disciplined gardener like before.
Winter is still in full swing, and this is NichiNichi’s second winter. This year I decided to take a small gamble and stay open as usual—but January brought heavy storms, which meant nearly a full extra week of closure, and in February, with Carnival coming up, I chose to simply close for nine days straight.
Looking back, January was actually quite decent. It’s a short month, of course, but interestingly, the hourly rate was far better than August, which is usually the month with the highest overall revenue. Tracking hourly rate since last year’s fourth quarter turned out to be a very wise decision. It poked holes in the illusion created by high turnover and forced me to face a harder truth: earning “more” often just means trading away more of your finite, non-renewable time.
Quiet months are, in fact, the best time to actively rethink and refine how you work. Over this period, I’ve revisited and improved product selection, production methods, storage, and re-processing workflows—things that are much harder to adjust during busy seasons.
So, my hope for the busy months this year is this: to rely on improved efficiency, earn enough with fewer hours, and keep more time for myself and my family.
Charlie Munger put it beautifully—happiness in life has never come from having more, but from expecting less. Once you truly understand that, there’s no need to trade huge chunks of your life for money. It becomes a calm, comfortable cycle.
Keep practicing, keep moving, and keep enjoying each single day.
I might not be a disciplined gardener like before.
Winter is still in full swing, and this is NichiNichi’s second winter. This year I decided to take a small gamble and stay open as usual—but January brought heavy storms, which meant nearly a full extra week of closure, and in February, with Carnival coming up, I chose to simply close for nine days straight.
Looking back, January was actually quite decent. It’s a short month, of course, but interestingly, the hourly rate was far better than August, which is usually the month with the highest overall revenue. Tracking hourly rate since last year’s fourth quarter turned out to be a very wise decision. It poked holes in the illusion created by high turnover and forced me to face a harder truth: earning “more” often just means trading away more of your finite, non-renewable time.
Quiet months are, in fact, the best time to actively rethink and refine how you work. Over this period, I’ve revisited and improved product selection, production methods, storage, and re-processing workflows—things that are much harder to adjust during busy seasons.
So, my hope for the busy months this year is this: to rely on improved efficiency, earn enough with fewer hours, and keep more time for myself and my family.
Charlie Munger put it beautifully—happiness in life has never come from having more, but from expecting less. Once you truly understand that, there’s no need to trade huge chunks of your life for money. It becomes a calm, comfortable cycle.
Keep practicing, keep moving, and keep enjoying each single day.
