Habits as plants in mental garden

Mental forest is a concept I occasionally use for memorization of complex information. But our habits are not pieces of information: they require constant attention on a smaller scale. So mental garden would be more appropriate. Here I develop the mental garden concept with visualization and use case.

Mental forests concept

The mental forest visualization is a 3D format of mind maps in a mental palace. The forest is a sort of mental palace, organizing the different parts of the information we want to remember according to topics. We can for example create a scenic route through the mental forest, where we revisit the subjects we find important in their natural order.

The topics themselves can be encoded as trees in the forest. The trunk is the main idea, from which smaller concepts emerge as branches. In mental trees the ideas run deep with relatively few splits, maybe 3 splits from a branch to sub-branches.  The details are visualized on the leaves that appear on smaller branches. This format is good for organizing highly structured information, like the classification of animal species. or computer code architecture, or business processes.

Clearly, this is a relatively complex visualization technique with a lot of nuances.  I rarely teach it in 1:1, but it is available in my video courses, where I describe it for approximately an hour. Then I switch to mental cities because people who need to remember a lot of information usually do not get this information in a highly structured format.

Mental gardens extension

Forests are big and wild. Gardens are usually small and well-cultivated. If we reduce the scale of the visualization and increase the complexity of the operations we can apply to it, mental forests become mental gardens. I claim that mental gardens are well suited to visualize our habits and the activities they require. One of the upsides of such an analogy: by imagining the operations that need to be applied to a garden, we can create effective procedures for managing our habits.

Good and bad habits

In a garden, there is usually a limited amount of space. All available space is taken by something. If we do not pave or plant something we need, something we do not need will grow instead. When we want to make room for new plants, some old plants should be removed. If we do not take care of the garden it will be overrun by unwanted weeds.

We have a fixed amount of time and financial budget for our habits. It is like a walled garden. Acquiring or selling territory might be possible, but it is a large project. We may complain that we do not have enough time, and yet when we have time we will always fill it with something. If we do not monitor how we fill our free time, we are likely to acquire parasitic habits.

Parasitic habits tend to be resistant. If some kid starts smoking out of boredom and peer pressure, the newly acquired habit will be very resilient. Psychological dependence is almost as effective as physiological dependence. Girls who check social media all day long miss a large part of their real lives.

So our garden should be tightly organized: removing empty unattended spaces and ensuring that there is no overcrowding. If necessary we can replace some plants with others.

Plants either grow or die

If we want our plants to remain of constant size, we need to prune them constantly. Plants that are not pruned usually either grow in size or simply die.

Somehow when we discuss our habits, we expect them to change very little. And yet, as we learn new things we eventually get bored and need to learn something new, more exciting or challenging. With time a sufficiently important habit acquires sub-habits and ceremonies. Even something as simple as drinking a cup of tea can easily grow into an elaborate ceremony.

If some habit does not go well, it will not slowly reduce itself. Instead, it will simply die. For example, if we go to the gym and practice a set of exercises, we have a good habit. If for some health reasons, we need to reduce the set of exercises significantly, we might enjoy the gym much less, and then we might stop going to the gym entirely.

Pruning can be done, but it requires high motivation and focus. If in the example of the gym, the limitation is time, we can remove some less critical exercises and actually enjoy the activity a bit more.

Grafting

Plants that are healthy but fruitless are often merged with fruit-bearing branches of other plants. The branch merges with preexisting roots and functions as a new plant, ensuring standardized productivity levels. Before grafting two apples rarely had the same taste. Grafting ensures standardization.

If we develop some skill independently and happen to like it, this does not make us professional. Professionals build upon enthusiasm acquired during the amature stages but use standard techniques and procedures simply because these techniques work very well.

Each professional might have unique roots, but the product of professional work is typically highly standardized. Something still depends on personal qualities, but the methods applied will probably be very predictable. Amateurs will probably be more unique, but also less fruitful.

The fruits grow on the branches of a mature plant

Initially, most plants will not bear fruits. The time to mature is different per plant, yet usually, only mature plants bear fruits. The more branches a plant has, the more fruits we are likely to collect. As the plant grows, the fruits become plentiful.

As we acquire habits and subhabits, we still need some level of mastery before our activity becomes fruitful. Typically this process takes years. Some combination practices are usually more likely to become fruitful than practicing a pure unmodified skill, simply because there are more combination practices than pure skills. Which of the branches will bear fruits is less important and often unpredictable. The wider the coverage of the practices, the deeper the control of each practice, the more likely we are to get fruits from our efforts.

Watering your plants

We all know that plants without water wither and die. If plants get too much water they rot, and actually die faster.

We should dedicate some time every month or every day to our habits, but if we overindulge something bad is likely to happen. Attending to each particular habit is like watering the relevant plant. Some plants are small but need a lot of water, while other plants like cacti might be huge and require very little water.

Plants that provide plenty of fruits are likely to require plenty of water. This has something to do with metabolism and competition with other fruit-bearing plants. Sorry, this is not my expertise.

As we provide plenty of water to the mature plants, they are likely to suffocate smaller and less mature plants. By analogy, we tend to have several mature habits that define our identity, and often when we try spin-off projects or step out of our comfort zone we do not provide them with as many resources as we should for their success.

Many actual gardens have an actual date when the original plants were planted. Some of the original plants grow immensely and new plants simply do not get enough nourishment to survive.

By the way, providing too many resources to a habit without some maturity is likely to result in adoption of some bad and inefficient practices, often making the entire habit impractical, or rotten in the mental garden analogy.

We tend to each plant in a garden and thus we do not forget them

In a garden, we tend to each plant. We carefully plan its placement. As it grows we prune to ensure the shape that we want. Every week we water the plant. When there are flowers we enjoy their sight and smell. As flowers become fruits, we carefully collect the fruits from each branch and subbranch. And if the plant is not sufficiently productive, we can attempt grafting. We remember all the branches and roots of every tree in our garden because we constantly treat them.

So why should we use mental visualization to remember our habits? We spend enough time on our habits to remember them pretty well.

The focus here is on organization. How likely are you to monitor a set of bad practices or parasitic habits? Empirically, not very lucky unless everything we plan to do is properly organized. We organize our gardens in a certain way to allow proper access. The plants should be synergetic with each other. If plants die we should replace them. If weeds grow we should remove them.

Our schedule is also the garden of our habits, and we should not allow them to grow wildly.