Plan ahead not to burn out
We are in year 14 of farming, with four kids ages 15 to 9 and running multiple profit centers — that leads to a whole lot of decisions. A Google scholar search revealed the average adult makes up to 35,000 decisions a day. I think the average market farmer makes twice that many. Add kids, and double that again!
Fig 1. Table of Contents from Farmer Spreadsheet Academy by Dan Brisebois.
We all know the August burnout feeling. It’s hot, your summer crew has just left, fall and winter plantings are going on, and the approaching fall harvest requires many decisions and prioritization. Early in my farming career I used to experience the physical fatigue of being worn out from all the labor. Hiring more team members, going no-till, mechanizing appropriately, and having standard practices greatly relieved that.
Yet, as I aged and our farm has matured, I was still experiencing what felt like fatigue. Through some research I have come to realize I was suffering from decision fatigue. The stress of COVID particularly aggravated this type of fatigue. Let’s define decision fatigue and then see what can be done about it.
Fig 2. Greenhouse and field seeding schedule, used by the author in Farmer Spreadsheet Academy. FSA is available at farmerspreadsheetacademy.com.
Decision fatigue is defined as an “impaired ability to make decisions and control behavior as a consequence of repeated acts of decision-making.” Apparently, our ability to force ourselves to do difficult things — that is, applying self-control or self-discipline — draws upon a certain limited resource within us. The more complex and difficult the decision is, the more of that resource is used up. It’s like when you cannot get that last pull-up when your muscles are fatigued; only with decision fatigue you are mentally fatigued. When exhausted in this way you might:
- Avoid unnecessary decisions. You procrastinate. If you can avoid it, you do.
- Choose the easiest of options from a list, while also overthinking and spending a lot of time choosing the tasks. (This was a big one for me as I planned each day, I would stress about what was most important, reworking the priority list multiple times.)
- Choose based on immediate needs like hunger or thirst, while ignoring the long-term consequences. Eating convenience foods or fast food because it is easy.
- A feeling of numbness, where you cannot make a decision. Brain fog. (Both my wife and I feel this in August and September every year).
- Lose inhibitions and behave impulsively, in extreme cases you can appear drunk.
The implications of decision fatigue for farmers are numerous. We are our own bosses and are often somewhat isolated in our daily decisions. The feedback loop of decisions we make in May often doesn’t show up until the end of the season or longer, so they better be good decisions in that moment. The one time you don’t tine weed your onions after a rain in May is the time you lose them to weeds by the end of July. Or when you know you should go check the high tunnel temp setting, roll down the sides, or put on Remay just in case, and you just don’t do it. You cannot muster for that one more thing.
Fig 2B. Field seeding schedule.
One of the most interesting findings in the studies on decision fatigue is which types of people seem to manage it best, namely people who set up their circumstances to minimize the amount of self-control they’d need to exert. They planned ahead. They scheduled, made lists, finished to-do’s early, and handled problems before they escalated. They built their lives so that they wouldn’t need to make as many decisions. They had specific routines and habits.
According to the research, if a certain action is a habit, then it doesn’t drain any self-control. This is both intuitively true and demonstrated by the research. Thinking that is thoughtful or involves analysis requires a withdrawal from our decision bank, but rote memorization or execution requires none. So, the more of your farm work that you can lock into a fixed routine — something you simply do, every time, without debate — the more mental energy you can conserve. Upon learning this information, we implemented some routines and habits on the farm that would reduce the number of decisions.
Step back and think about your whole year. When do you feel fatigued? For us, it was largely in the spring time rush of planting and August/September when full harvest and planting for Fall is occurring. How can one simply remove decision-making during these times?
Plan in winter, execute in season
I am a fan of spreadsheets and have developed a good system over the years. But I always felt I could do better, wanting a system that would cover the entire year and coordinate finances, planting, harvesting, and record-keeping all in one system. I found that system two years ago in Farm Spreadsheet Academy by Dan Brisebios.
Fig 3. Weekly tasks list. Blue color are weekly tasks that repeat.
It allows me to plan each week of the year’s production, harvest, field maps, and records based on specific financial goals. Just have a system that works for you. I do critical and deep thinking based on key growing notes taken during the year (a Google docs link called “Key Farm Notes” on my smartphone ensures I can quickly write notes during the season).
Using in-season notes, customer surveys, actual production records, and our market demand and goals ensures I am not rethinking in the thick of the main season. I just followed the table of contents in Figure 1. This process gives me a step-by-step process that reduces the number of decisions I need to make around crop planning. I can do this while sipping my tea and the snow is blowing outside, which actually makes it enjoyable.
The winter planning is broken into weeks of the year in my field notebook that has simple charts that show the when, where, and what tool for each direct seeding and transplanting. I do the same for the greenhouse notebook. My goal is that my field crew and greenhouse manager can execute each weekly planting without asking me a question or questioning the plan.
With this system, I don’t have to think at all about what should be planted, where, when, and how much. I just have to flex the plan within each week based on weather and labor availability. I complete this plan by the middle of January each year (okay, this year it was the end of February before I completed it).
Schedule, prioritize, execute
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said: “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Wishes never come true. So if the goal is to build habits that reduce the load of decision-making, and habits reduce decision fatigue, then we need habits that accomplish this on the farm. Habits have a specific time, place, and frequency. Here are some common ways we do these types of habits on the farm.
Set a monthly employee schedule.
With 12 employees of various age ranges, scheduling is a feat that involves lots of decisions. We started scheduling out our employees by the month instead of every two weeks. It reduced the number of times and amount of decisions we had to make. We based each week of total work hours on actual hours from previous years by week of the year (see my previous article “Developing youth farm team members” from the April GFM).
At the beginning of the year, we ask for vacation requests, map out our vacations, etc., so we can see major gaps. On the third week of the month, we draft next month’s schedule and then send it out to our team members for any corrections. We then send out a final copy on Friday of that week. I love saying, “Check the schedule, I don’t keep track of when you are supposed to work.” It is comforting knowing each day of the week I will have enough team members to get the work done, and I can flex and adapt the workload if people are sick, etc.
Conduct weekly farm walk
On Friday afternoons at 4 p.m. my “Farm Walk” labeled phone alarm goes off and my Google calendar notification pops up “Conduct Weekly Farm Walk.” I stop whatever I am doing and take a farm walk through fields, washshed, and equipment areas to record tasks that need to be done. I list these in a Google sheet called “Master Tasks” as I walk along.
I try to do this with some of my crew so they can observe as well. This typically takes about 30 minutes. Sometimes I do another farm walk on Wed at 4 p.m. during the busiest times of year just to cross-check things and see if certain tasks need to be moved up the priority list. I then prioritize this list in the following way.
Priority list system
In the quiet and peace of my desk, I break the weekly farm walk master list into three worksheet lists: Weekly Field Crew list, Dan’s Office Master Lists (to be done during office hours), Dan’s Outdoor Master List (building projects, other items only I can do).
I organize this by week of the year, see Figure 3. At the top in blue are the week’s tasks that always have to be done and on which days. These generally don’t change, even season to season. Most of these tasks have associated spreadsheets where I can record (501,502) information as these tasks are conducted each week of the year. Yield walks on Tuesday, harvest and washing Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Planting Tuesdays and Thursday. Tray making Thursday and seeding trays on Friday.
Friday at 4:30 p.m. I take the weekly farm list and plan my next week. I look at the weather, what my actual labor supply will be each day, carry over any undone tasks from the week (none with x’s), and then assign a day to each of the tasks. I sort the column by day, this is my week’s to-do list. See Figure 4. July 30th week, week 29 of the year.
Fig. 4. Ranking tasks into days.
Monday morning, and each morning of the week, I then rank each of that day’s tasks 1 thru 5. Sometimes more or less tasks depending on circumstances for the day. This keeps me organized, but also very flexible given how weather and labor availability changes each day. I then transfer these numbered tasks to the dry erase board for the field manager. This season I am going to have the field manager do this — no need for me to do that work!
Fig 5. Ranking the day’s tasks by priority.
At the end of the day, the field crew or I put an “x” next to all the tasks that have been done. I can then sort the column again and all the “x” tasks get moved to the bottom. This is very rewarding at the end of the day and week to see all that we accomplished. We can also see what needs to get moved to the next day. It also is a record that I can utilize for future planning.
This year I added an “extra’s list,” a set of tasks that would be great to get to, but not essential. The team members can then choose from this list on their own if they finish their daily tasks, and I can be off farm or “unavailable” a lot easier.
The above is not important in its specific method, but more that we have a routine that is repeatable and done the same way each week. It becomes automatic and rote. Create a system for your farm that can be done by multiple people. Most of my decisions have to do with what my team members should do on any given day and throughout the week. Then, there is a list of my tasks. I often would get stressed out and have anxiety about what choice was the right choice and maximizing their time and mine. I always prioritize these three things first, plant, harvest, and wash. These are really the only things that add value (make money) on the farm. I now just think deeply once per week about the tasks, then prioritize each day and then execute. My team members and I are disciplined enough to follow the process, and everyone trusts the system so the reward is efficiency, positivity, and a job well done.
Weekly meetings
My wife, Julie and I farm and raise our family together. She owns 51 percent of the business, so really I am just an employee. It is a wonderful partnership. We have very clear roles and responsibilities in both farm and family. The farm can consume our every thinking and conversational moments leading to fatigue, reduced creativity and joy in our marriage and work, if we let it. We have built the following habits to improve our quality of life.
Fig 6. Daily task list for crew, prioritized.
Weekly farm meeting. Each Wednesday at 10 a.m. we meet together with an agenda that has been building since the last week we met. Typically, this meeting runs 10 to 45 minutes. The agenda is a running Google document with specific sections, Crop List, Employees, Finance, Infrastructure, and Revisit, see Figure 7.
All week we are adding items we need to discuss or want to share. In this way we capture key ideas or concerns during the day, but don’t have to interrupt each other’s workflow multiple times throughout the day. And most importantly, we reduce the number of decisions we are asking each other to make throughout the day. We can make them together, all at once.
Fig 7. Weekly farm planning agenda.
Weekly family plan meeting. Each Saturday or Sunday afternoon we meet to reflect and go over daily family logistics. Typically, we can do this in about 15 minutes. We have a specific agenda and process for this meeting.
On Sunday afternoon, we have a personal meeting. We share our individual wins and challenges from the past week, check in on the top three goals each of us had and the next week’s top three goals. Then, we go through each day of the week and discuss key events and logistics. One key element is that we assign “lead parent” times. We assign who is taking who, when and where, and other key coordination that relate to family and farm interactions.
Close and open the books finance meeting template.
We go through by two hour blocks of the day so that we communicate clearly. We share the parenting/household load, and this process helps us divide the responsibilities and keep us honest. We can reflect on the previous week and also project into the next week how busy the work/life balance will be and support each other in specific ways.
For example, in the spring rush of planting, Julie knows I will need more work time to get tasks done without parenting responsibilities. I know when she is prepping for sales, interacting with CSA members, or has big kitchen days, I can step up my parenting time. It is key to both the health of our marriage, but also our mindset about work. It helps keep the farm from ruling our family life. I can be “lead parent” for an afternoon, knowing I will have time for my work later. Or if I am a lead parent, I schedule tasks for the afternoon that my team members will not need me or that will work with kids.
Seasonal farm meetings
We have four annual meetings that run two or three hours each: Close Books, Open Books, Mid-Year Check, and End of Year Review. Each one of these meetings has a running agenda document that we can add things to during the year as we think of them and will need to revisit together.
Early December we have a pre- “Close the Books” financial meeting to see if any glaring issues need addressing before the end of the calendar year. We also assign budget and reporting responsibilities for a longer finance meeting in January. We begin to close the books and start reflecting on the year financially and projecting for the next year. We like to do this while the year is somewhat fresh and to prep accounting and tax materials. In January we have an “Open the Books” finance meeting where we do a deep dive into the numbers from the year and finalize next year’s plans.
End of Year review is done with our full staff in October or November and follows a similar framework to the GFM article by Dan Brisebois, “Do your end-of-year check-in before the season is over.”
Automation
We do this by writing SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures), scheduling repeated tasks, and using technology. Here are some examples. I am not going to go into detail for all of these, except for weeding.
We use a no-till deep compost system, and silage tarps so our weed pressure is very low. In addition, our soil base is very sandy and well-drained so we can schedule weeding even if it rained the day before. We tine weed all beds (assume empty or at small enough growth stage once a week). I just send two people to walk through all plots and tine weed all the beds that can be weeded, which takes about 20 minutes per bed during the peak of the season.
I used to try and schedule by bed, every seven to ten days after all plantings, but it is simpler and more effective to do this on a schedule. Very little gets missed this way. Crops unable to be tine weeded, or where weeds get beyond cotyledon stage, get a light wire/collinear hoeing as needed, especially right before canopy closure. We note these areas from our weekly farm walks. Here are some other examples of places to automate.
SOPs for weekly tasks: I focus on areas that have lots of detail, or where multiple people need to be trained on the specific job. I can then check in on a task and not have to remember all the steps myself, and it empowers my team members to do a thorough job without asking me for details. Here are some sample SOPs.
Wash Shed Start Up, Tear Down
Tray Seeding
Tarping On, Off
Irrigation with timers: I used to move a lot of hoses and irrigation layflat. This was total muda (waste) and caused crops to not get the water they needed. We water almost everything every day due to the deep compost system and very well-drained nature of our soil. We are experimenting with pulse watering in our tunnels. This is critical to keep the top 6 inches of the soil well-hydrated so our soil biology never shuts down.
We have to reprogram all timers every two months to account for each spring, summer, fall, and winter season’s variables and crop changes. This has easily doubled our crop yields per bed foot and reduced my decision-making fatigue and overall stress. The one danger of automation is that it is easy to stop observing and checking things, which makes it easy to overwater or underwater. We build that into our weekly field walk to ensure good weekly watering. A soil probe stuck down 8 inches in a couple spots per plot or bed causes this to be quick and easy to assess.
Time to enjoy and recharge
The second best way to reduce decision fatigue is to get rest, both daily and longer rest. We make daily rest a habit by:
8 hours of sleep. We are at a stage where if we are disciplined enough to not watch more than one Netflix episode with our kids in the evening, we can accomplish this even in the busiest times of year. It is really amazing how I feel when I consistently practice this habit. In order to ensure good sleep, I have recently started doing the 3-2-1 habit. 3 hours before bed no food, 2 hours before bed no liquids, and 1 hour before bed no screens (I’m still working on that last one).
Start and stop time to work days. Our team members generally start and stop all farm work at standard times throughout the year, generally 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day, averaging 35 to 40 hours during the thick of the season (see previous GFM article for more detail). Julie and I work 40 to 60 hours, but we have a long-term goal of getting to below 40 hours a week. This self-imposed constraint is leveraged so that we actually have time and rest with family and to pursue other interests. Right now those interests largely involve our children’s events and activities, but such is the season during this stage of life.
Take breaks throughout the day. I learned this the hard way and almost broke my body, but that is another story. As I have aged and desire to continue farming well into old age, I have found taking breaks daily is key. We set this up by Tea break at 10 a.m. (10 min), lunch break 12:30 p.m. (30 min), and another Tea break at 3 p.m. (10 min), and usually ending our work between 5 and 6 p.m. each day. When we consistently practice these things it is amazing how much our quality of life and work actually improves.
Physical mobility. Daily yoga that warms my body up and has seasonal focuses has kept me farming relatively pain free the last five years and managing stress levels. Before that, I was often in pain and just pushed through it, young and stubborn. I focus on strength building and core workouts during the slower seasons for 30 minutes a day and mobility and flexibility during the main season for 5 to 15 minutes a day.
We make longer rests a habit by the following:
Short breaks between CSA seasons. It is possible to take four weeks of vacation a year. As I listen to more farmer podcasts and stories, and as our farm has matured, I realized that it is possible and in fact critical to farming for the long run, especially as we run a four-season farm. Having a good farm team to keep the farm running has been critical to making this work.
We schedule two-week breaks in between our Spring, Summer, and Fall CSA seasons, and we run an every-other-week Winter CSA, with a five-week break between Winter and Spring CSA. By this I mean no CSA pickup happens, but our farmstand and wholesale may or may not still be open. We try to leave the farm during some part of these breaks as we live on the farm and 90 percent of our business is directly from the farm. Here is how we structure these breaks.
- Spring Break. Spring CSA ends the fourth week of May, then we have two weeks off from CSA, with Summer CSA starting second week of June. This works with school schedules and lately has been when we go to weddings and travel to visit family. In Spring of 2023, we actually left the farm for 10 days straight during this time!
- Summer Break. The second break is the first two weeks in September between Summer and Fall CSA. This gives us a breather after a long 12-week Summer season. We typically leave for two long weekends during this September break and catch up on farm fall tasks during the week, since the kids are all in school.
- Thanksgiving Break. The third break is from third week of November until the third in December. School is out for some of that time, and we always visit family for a week for Thanksgiving, then have the first two weeks of December to be at the farm. The farm is completely closed during this break.
- Winter Break. Our Winter CSA begins the third week of December, and we are only open during CSA pick up times, three days a week, for about a total of nine hours a week. The Winter CSA then resumes every other week from second week in January to second week in March.
- End of Season Break. The fifth break then is a long one from middle March to middle April, where we are only selling to a couple wholesale accounts and can be away from the farm for longer periods of time as needed.
Decision fatigue is real and can be reduced by building habits and routines that reduce each day’s decision making load. Commit to making one habit this season so you can continue to farm for the long haul. You can do this!
To learn more about Perkins’ Good Earth Farm visit us at www.perkinsgoodearthfarm.com or on Facebook or Instagram.
