When I stubbed out (titled) this post August 6, I had no way of knowing that I was days away from spending a lot of time talking about life changing events. In fact, I was having a hard time coming up with topics that I wanted to discuss at all that week. Today I thought a little about trying to wind the two stories together and make some cute correlation to my failed garden attempt and life’s struggles. In the end, I decided to keep to the subject matter of my failings rather than go higher level.

Dosen’t everyone want to present their best face on the internet and not talk about their failures? Even I resist the urge to bring it up sometimes but I think it is also real. We all have things that we knew that we could do better even when you were in the midst of failing. To be one hundred percent transparent, not everything failed just the majority of things.

In my career at least I am big on lesson’s learned and root cause analysis. If we study our issues we can then implement changes to at least try and prevent the failures from occurring in the first place. How do you actually do that? I will try to outline the rough procedure below.

What Happened? I started seeds in late February with the intent of getting them in the ground in late April / early May. I had plans to build garden beds in the front yard since I tore them up in the back yard last year. I didn’t end up planting the seedlings in the ground until early July.

Why? My career options changed and with it so did my personal priorities. I needed a conditioned space to work as I was freezing all day long. So I stopped focusing on plants and focused on building my office with my free time.

Why? Lacking any sort of plan, I assessed what spaces I had and determined that I could plant in the flower beds in early May. As I was working the bed, I contracted Covid. Not that I couldn’t physically continue but I took it easier for two weeks and lost momentum. In that same time frame, I had a discussion with my wife about what I was doing and she didn’t agree with how I was proceeding.

Why? She wanted me to build raised beds in the flower beds which I didn’t have the materials to do so nor did I want to spend the time away from my office project. Because there was some doubt as to whether we would need to move, we were hesitant to make some unconventional changes to the yard as well.

Root Cause: I didn’t have a plan in place to plant my seedlings in an appropriate time frame. I planted them too late and they didn’t survive.

Corrective Action: To avoid this in the future, I need to have a project plan on where the milestones are clearly defined. Where are the beds going to be? When do they need to be completed in time to plant? How will the beds be constructed?

End Your Programming Routine: I knew that the chances were low that this would be successful. Given that I had already put energy into starting seeds and keeping them alive, I thought that it was at least worth testing their chances. It wasn’t as if I was ignoring them in the ground, I kept it wet and checked on them daily. The sun was just too intense and the plants were not able to withstand the heat all day.