How To Get Everything Done At Once

By Dion Baker
Dion Baker is the creator of Infinite Productions LLC, - an educational company dedicated to self-empowerment through creative media. He is a hip-hop artist, author of the ReBirth Certificate – 3 Steps to ReCreate Your Life, and creator of the empowerment lifestyle fashion brand, WOMB Apparel.


I recently posted an article titled “Life, Plants and Three Principles You Should Know”. In the article I used the experiences of my friend Andy to convey three principles that I’ve discovered between life and plants. Self-Suffice – an extremely talented hip-hop artist and teacher – shared a great analogy with me after reading it.
In his analogy, he made an excellent metaphor between focus and drops of water. He equated each water droplet to one second. Furthermore, after a full day we accumulate a bucket of water that we can use to water our gardens.
86,400 Opportunities
And did you know that there are 86,400 seconds in our day? Each one of those seconds is an opportunity (drop of water) that can be invested into different areas of your life (gardens).
Have you ever gotten overwhelmed trying to focus on everything at once? It can feel like an impossible task and, in fact… it is.
Watering all of your gardens is a challenge we all face. Family, business, fitness, employment, marriage, and household responsibilities can absorb so much water (time)! It can be a serious challenge to successfully invest in all of the areas of your life!
Self-Suffice stated, “If we only pour our focus into 1 or 2 gardens for too long, the others will grow weeds, rotten fruit, and dying flowers.” And he went on to ask the big question …
How can you water all of your gardens?”
It’s such a pertinent question for us all, isn’t it? So I decided to create a handful of simple solutions to this common problem. I came up with four simple ideas for how you can water all of your gardens with only 86,400 drops of water. Yes… all gardens. Following these four basic steps will help you get everything done at once.
#1 – Eliminate unnecessary gardens
#2 – Expand your time horizon
#3 – Get a team to help you
#4 – Make compost
#1 – Eliminate Unnecessary Gardens
Cease contributing your time and focus to unfruitful activity. We often invest our time in time consuming and unfruitful endeavors that need to be uprooted from our agenda. Bottom line: if it’s not beneficial get rid of it. Check out my post “Winners Quit” for a practical exercise on how to do this.
#2 – Expand Your Time Horizon
Establish the appropriate time horizons when watering your gardens. This will help reduce the pressure to complete tasks in unrealistic timeframes. With only 24 hours in a day, there’s only so much you can do so you may need to expand your timeline to a few days or a week, for example.
Remember: all plants don’t need to be watered every day!
#3 – Get a Team to Help You
Expand your effectiveness by getting others to help you water and plant. More than likely, there are tasks you can have other people handle. By delegating tasks to other people you free time up to do the things you do best and to do the things you want to do. Plus, each additional person adds 24 more hours to your day. Getting just one additional teammate adds 24 hours; two teammates will add another 24 hours.
If you’re bad at math, take a look at this: your 24 hours + 1st Teammate’s 24 hours + 2nd Teammate’s 24 hours = 72 hours in one day. Now, the 86,400 drops transformed into 259,200 drops that are being watered on your garden. By working with others you can open up the clouds and make it rain! So, how many teammates would you like to have?
#4 – Make Compost
Turn the negatives into positives. Use the weeds, rotting fruit, and dying flowers to make compost. All of the plants and fruit that withered away can help foster conditions for other (better) things to grow. Try not to worry too much about lost crops and make the best of your current conditions. In the plant world, our failures are biodegradable!