Today’s Topic of the Month post is from Guest blogger Patricia Mayo:

For those who say “money doesn’t grow on trees” – they have apparently never raised a bonsai.

Meet Heihachi the Bonsai —> He helped me earn $3,000 a week. When he died, so did my income – and I’m beginning to think it’s high time I get another one.

Unlike most other container plants, I’m thoroughly convinced that bonsai have an energy all their own. They impose their will upon you – not the other way around. The bonsai itself becomes the master; you, the student – and if you truly listen, the lessons are limitless and extremely broadly applicable.

The Magic of Bonsai

“Planting in a tray” captivated my undying love shortly after I developed an obsession with all things Asian. No, I’m not some silly otaku – it actually developed from digging into my heritage. I discovered the half of me that is Hawaiian actually originated a little further west. Unfortunately, I think my green thumb is from my Irish quarter, but I digress.

There’s just something about these tiny trees that draws the eye. It’s so small and yet so full-grown – almost as if you could fit the world in a bottle and all the world’s wisdom on a single branch. A sense of overwhelming peace directs your thoughts to what must be truly valiant pursuits – if only you could remember precisely what crossed your mind, for it was certainly important, but oh that tree is so beautiful!

That pause in the viewer is just one half of Bonsai’s magic – the rest is all in the doing. Bonsai uses cultivation techniques like pruning, root reduction, ridiculously restrictive potting, defoliation, wire-wrapping and grafting to create a living labor of love – a work of art that is as much a reflection of its creator as its creator is a reflection of the art.

Raising a bonsai changes you. Little by little, you start becoming your own perfect self as you shape your perfect tree. For the sake of your precious little tree, you dare to learn everything, try anything, and become fixated on the tiniest detail with compulsive obsession.

Bonsai is not a practice you can do without practicing – any amount of procrastination will show – so you are driven to get out of that chair and actually do something several times a day. You’re also in it for the long haul – my Heihachi was 6 years old in that photo, just a sapling in the Bonsai world – and accepting that ridiculously long commitment develops long-term discipline and vision.

Although – there’s something else that shares this distinct set of traits and habits…

En”tree”preneurship

Bonsai lends directly to successful entrepreneurship. While you may think a plant which requires so much time and devotion would take away from your productivity, it actually teaches you to be more efficient with limited resources. Bonsai also provides ample doses of determination, persistence, patience, and most of all – discipline.

The very same traits which nurture a bonsai also nurture any professional endeavor, and the very physical and deliberate act of caring for a bonsai gets you going on your goals. A body in motion tends to stay in motion, and a bonsai demands much motion.

I used to wake up near the crack of dawn just to move Heihachi from his evening spot on my desk to an open window and give him the first misting of the day. Half an hour later, I was back watering him again and making sure the tray beneath him was well-stocked with water for the day.

A few hours later, another double-dose of misting and watering 30 minutes apart. Wash, rinse, repeat about 3 to 5 times a day, and you have the perfect recipe for developing a good habit and markable milestones throughout the work day.

Of course the environmental benefits of a bonsai are not to be ignored. Only one half of Bonsai’s magic is in the doing – the other half is in the observation. Just like your parents used to say “when you have kids of your own…” – when you have a bonsai, you’ll understand.

Several of you here at work.life.creativity. know that I lost my job last month. The economy took it’s toll on the company I was working for. Since I got laid off, I’ve been at home most of the time, when I haven’t been working with BarCamp Nashville 2009 to get it ready for October (which has really been great, since I’ve had the time to focus on it and meet some really rockstar people.)

But now that I’m home all the time, it seems like I have even _less_ time on my hands than I did before. Of course, a lot of that can be attributed to the fact that I have a seven-month-old around whose little finger I am wrapped. So I am not able to get much done between her naps, and naptime gets shorter and shorter. In about six months, she’ll be down to one nap a day.

So I am trying to figure out the best way to manage my time so that I can still get a lot of stuff done. I have freelance gigs to hunt down and work on, fine art to do, and then household duties as well as taking care of my family. I’ve thought about coming up with a sort of block schedule much like a school schedule, where for a blocked off segment of time I work on a designated area of my responsibilities. A few years ago, I read about graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister’s “Year Without Clients,” where he took a year-long sabbatical from client projects. (Of course, he taught class at SVA like one or two nights a week, but other than that he wasn’t doing anything.) He found that his time was being spent doing chores, and not exploring graphic design problems like he had wanted to during his sabbatical. So he went and made a school-like schedule, where he would, for example, experiment with Photoshop from 9 to 11 on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, or visit galleries on Thursday afternoons, and so forth.

It seems that having some sort of structure to work within helps us be more productive and really do what we want to do. So I wonder if taking that sort of approach would help me accomplish what I want to accomplish.

If you work in an unstructured environment, or if you’re at home all the time, how do you make sure you get done what you want to accomplish? Share over in the forums.

Lately, I’ve found myself in a funk, really annoyed and frustrated when I’ve felt ignored or snubbed, sometimes by small things, things that wouldn’t normally bother me. I suppose there are a number of reasons, probably the main one being that I’m not getting a lot of rest these days due to the little bundle that arrived almost six months ago and has a way of taking over our lives. A lack of sleep can result in a short(er) fuse.

After talking to my wife about my frustrations, I came to the realization that I’ve never learned how to create distance between myself and the things people say and do and not take them personally. For me, that’s tough to do. I don’t know why, but I’ve tended to take a lot of things personally, facing life with a chip on my shoulder. Regardless of the reason why I do that, (that’s a whole ‘nother issue altogether) learning how to objectively approach everything is still something I need to learn. My wife tells me that when she worked at a retail store in the mall in high school and college, she learned to not let it bother her when a customer was grouchy toward her, since 99% of the time it wasn’t about her. Said customer was probably having a bad day and was engaging in some “retail therapy” to make things better.

So my question to you is this: how do you go about creating distance between your emotions and what goes on around you? How do you get yourself out of the way? Let me know in the forums.