If you have a large garden, especially one with an irregular shape you’ll be familiar with the dilemma of “how do you mow it?”. If you have a ride-on, you can’t do simple stripes, as the thing has to be manoeuvred. The challenge is to come up with a pattern that cuts all of the grass once, with as little possible being cut more than once, and minimising any ned for reversing. It sounds simple, but really isn’t; come up with the right pattern and you move in a smooth flow, that is both satisfying and efficient, saving time and effort. There is a zen-like quality to being one with the flow.

In the midst of my meditative mowing, it occurred to me that there is a similarity between the use of good strategy for mowing and for business. Finding the way to get the most done for the least input, by seeing the relationship between shapes and then flowing smoothly from one to the next. When you are doing things well you are not working so much as dancing. All very fanciful you may say, but I suggest that if everything you do is taking vast effort, and only achieved by dint of hard work, then you are perhaps missing this sense of how these things relate to each other and you to them.

Could Life be easier? Sometimes, just sometimes, mow is less…