Who, What, Where, When, How, and Why?

Someone once told me that any goal, whether short term or long term, can be effectively planned out by taking the time to answer six seemingly simple questions: who? what? where? when? how? and why? It all seems simple enough . . .

During this season of fallowness, I'm going to take some time to answer those six questions, one each day for the next week. I'm also going to turn the dirt in the garden by hand with a big sturdy shovel as the weather permits. I will be using a rototiller later in the season on the upper backyard garden, but it is too big and unwieldy for the lower backyard garden and the front yard, so I will dig by hand, just as my mother did in her own garden, and her father before that, and his father before that.

Indeed, I will be the one doing the digging and planting and tending and harvesting and weighing, but everyone in my family who came before me will have some measurable influence in the what, where, when, how, and why that goes into creating my one-ton backyard garden.

Suddenly the simple question of "who?" isn't quite so simple after all.