What is gardening? Is it just about maintaining one's natural environment in the long term? Or is it simply helping nature grow and flourish? I believe there's a bit more to it.
First, gardening is a practice. It involves taking a "head down," zen-like approach to doing things in order to reap compounding effects in the future. This means regularly watering the plants, nurturing them, and giving them access to sunlight. Generally speaking, by consistently attending to any practice, one builds resilience and confidence while establishing a strong foundation.
Second, it has a long-term and constantly unfolding perspective. When your friend shows you their garden, all you see is the result - a status. Even though you know that your friend put a lot of time and effort into it, the garden for you is just an immediate state. You can't remember how it was growing, for example. However, every good gardener knows that a garden is never just a state; it's not actually a noun.
It's a process that continually unfolds, and we help it grow by practicing the art of gardening. That is, by giving it what it needs and reducing things that can harm it. Gardening is also never short-term. It involves waiting as a natural part of the process.
Third, gardening is about creating something to be admired. A garden brings joy not only to the gardener but also to those passing by or visiting. Gardening has been a part of a social display game that people have played since the 16th century BC, making it over 3500 years old. That is, gardening is done partly to be looked at — by strangers.
To me, gardening is a metaphor for maintaining a sustainable social media presence. We live in an age where offline and online practices are intertwined, and it's natural to feel overwhelmed by the constant influx of information. Some inputs can be productive, while others are not.
In this sense, digital gardening is a set of practices that I have developed. These practices focus on maintaining my tools and presence in the digital and online environment. For example, I consider my website as one of my gardens. To maintain it, I publish new articles, findings, and thoughts to keep it up to date with information about who I am, what I'm all about, and what my plans are. My website serves as my digital headquarters, and when guests visit, I want it to be clear, helpful, and useful.
I don't stress over it — I use it (and abuse it: it went through too many redesigns). I understand the importance of taking care of it, finding and fixing bugs, correcting typos (I make a lot of typos), and adding small features. To those familiar with bonsai, this might sound relatable.
Approaching my digital and online presence through the lens of gardening helps me stay sane, focus on producing signals over noise, and adopt a different perspective. I believe people often share a lot and quickly to "stay visible," on social media, but I personally don't find this neither useful not healthy. So the gardening approach, which requires patience, not only teaches me to share more meaningful things but also prevents me from contributing to the social status race induced by social media that my mind would otherwise happily join.
To sum it up, digital gardening is the practice of maintaining one's social media (and digital) presence (and tools) by taking care of it when necessary and contributing something meaningful rather than opting for the default race of "more".
Originally published on my website.