About 18 months ago I asked my husband to prune the enormous 30 foot William pear tree we had inherited at our new home. Despite it being a good-looking tree, it did create quite a bit of shade on the lawn and worse than that, it tried very hard to kill us by launching its arsenal of very large, firm pears onto the patio from a great height! They would splat everywhere – often missing us by a whisker, cause enormous mess and draw in swarms of wasps!
Who’s job?
Six months later, nothing had happened despite me explaining that this was a ‘blue job’ and not a ‘pink job’ – my system of ensuring that I don’t get ALL the jobs! I became impatient, as only a woman can when there’s an unexplained delay in getting something done, and so I took matters into my own hands and called in a ninja tree surgeon. He estimated £240 for the required short, back and sides.
Hubby said NO! He wasn’t spending that kind of money when he could do it himself. Alas, another year passed…
Excuses, excuses…
You see it wasn’t quite the right time. He wouldn’t do it because Spring was now here, then we had to wait for the pears to drop, then it was too cold, too wet or too snowy. We’ve had unseasonably good weather for a few weeks (too hot) but he didn’t have the right ladder, the electric extension lead had been lent out somewhere or it was more important to watch a Chelsea football match. We also had to wait for Winter when the tree would ‘think it was dead and wouldn’t feel the saw’ or else he would give me the big puppy dog eyes and promise definitely for ‘next weekend’.
Not so much Mother’s Day as Monkey Day!
Having regurgitated this whole load of excuses back to him on Friday, he promised faithfully it would be done on Saturday. But then he was on call-out and ended up on the other side of London for hours. And so Mother’s Day arrived on Sunday and lo and behold – the patio was awash with high tech cutting equipment and several monstrous ladders. Next thing I know, I’m being put as a ‘footer’ at the bottom of an impossibly tall ladder, precariously balanced high up on a thin branch, looking up at my husband’s legs dangling down from the sky.
I was absolutely terrified that he would tumble down on top of me clutching the eight foot branch he was attacking with such vigour. The poor tree, having started sprouting its first buds, rained them down on me in protest, ruining my tea. I went from being terrified of losing hubby to feeling like I’d employed a mad axe murderer to decapitate an innocent being.
Pruning our business
As I stood on the bottom rung, keeping the ladder as steady as I could, I got to thinking about pruning things in business. I wondered why we sometimes procrastinate about streamlining our systems or clearing out old paperwork. It seems that sometimes we are too close to the coal face to see what needs doing to get our business functioning as well as it can.
So take five minutes with a cuppa and have a fresh look at your practice and where you could lop off some unnecessary branches. Where are you wasting money? Where could you make some changes and improve efficiency? Where could you save time by outsourcing your book-keeping, for example? Could you employ better technology such as an online booking system or credit card payment gismo to make it easier for your patients to pay?
Don’t leave it until the next New Year to realise you never got around to it.
Anyway, I’m thinking that I’d like us to decorate the lounge next. What do you think are my chances?
