Most of us don’t need more things to do, we need a moment to pause. To notice what is working. What feels out of balance. And what wants to change.
That is why we created "12 Permaculture Principles for the Design of a Life."
It's a free reflection journal inspired by the 12 principles of permaculture that we use on our farm.
Those of you who have been here and seen the abundance of the guilds have experienced the results we have seen from applying the principles.
Inside, you’ll find simple questions to help you:
reconnect with yourself
feel more grounded
notice patterns in your life
make decisions with greater clarity
move forward more intentionally
This is not a journal about having all the answers.
It is an invitation to slow down, observe, and listen.
The same principles that help us design healthy, resilient ecosystems can also help us design more thoughtful lives.
The journal is completely free and I'd love to share it with you.
Why that third coffee
Most people arrive at the farm holding a coffee. I'm not being critical — I've got one in my hand too. They've driven up from Denver or Fort Collins, they've been on calls since 7am, and the day we're about to do together is a real day: 8 hours in the barn on the thing they've been circling all quarter. The annual plan that keeps slipping. The conversation with a business partner they haven't been willing to have. The number on the page that doesn't match the story they've been telling about the company.
Draining and invigorating at the same time. That's the design.
But somewhere around noon we stop, and we eat lunch that came off this land, and then we walk. Down past the chicken run, out along the edge of the alfalfa field, with Longs Peak sitting there the way it has for the entire history of everyone who has ever been anxious about a Q3 forecast.
And something changes in people. Not always. But often enough that I've started paying attention to it.
The second principle of permaculture is catch and store energy. Every living system knows how to gather what's abundant now and hold it for the leaner months. The stored apple carries summer into winter.
Here's the line I keep coming back to: when we don't store our own energy, we become dependent on adrenaline and on borrowed inputs to keep us propped up. Caffeine. Screens. A drink at the end of it. The scroll.
They regulate our energy for us, they do it quickly, and then they take more than they gave.
I don't think most of the executives I work with are burned out. I think they've been running on borrowed energy so long they've lost the ability to tell the difference between being resourced and being wired. I know this because I'm there too. A lot.
So here's what I think the lunch is actually for. It isn't hospitality, though I hope it's hospitable. It's that a plate of food that grew a hundred feet from where you're sitting is a fairly blunt argument against the idea that you can keep spending faster than you earn.
You can't outrun nature’s pace, the soil and the sun.
And the walk isn't fresh air. The walk is twenty minutes in which nobody is going anywhere.
The ducks are the best teachers out here, because they refuse to be efficient. They lay under a shrub, in the coal cart, once inside an upturned wheelbarrow, and the only way to find the eggs is to go slowly and look. You cannot hunt duck eggs at pace. The farm won't let you.
For the people who are open to it, that's the real work of the day. Not the plan. The twenty minutes. What they get, sometimes for the first time in months, is the chance to tell the difference between motion and meaning. Those two feel identical from the inside when you're moving fast enough. Both are full. Both are urgent. Both leave you able to say, honestly, that you worked hard.
Only one of them is your life. Slowing down is the only instrument I know that separates them.
Now the part I'd rather not write. I am the worst offender I know.
I work all week with my clients. Then I work all weekend on the farm — chickens, ducks, irrigation, the orchard, a list that regenerates faster than the alfalfa. I built a place whose entire purpose is to teach that renewal has to be designed in before you need it, and yet I run it on borrowed energy. I built it partly because I needed it, but I'm still out here at 4pm on a Sunday telling myself I'll rest when the maintenance list is done.
The maintenance is never done. That's not a maintenance problem.
What I'm getting intentional about, out loud, so you can hold me to it — practices that help me store energy rather than just spend it. A grounding meditation. The sauna. A walk around the field that isn't on the way to a job. A hike where nothing needs anything from me.
But I can feel the trap in my own list. It would be easy to turn those four things into a fifth project — to schedule restoration the way I schedule everything else, execute it competently, and end up with a better class of borrowed input.
A sauna I take in order to produce more on Monday isn't rest. It's maintenance on the machine.
The principle isn't only catch. It's catch and store. I'm good at catching. Storing is the other thing entirely: containing what came in without immediately spending it, and trusting that what fills you now is meant to sustain you later.
I don't know how to do that well yet. I'd rather tell you that mid-practice than wait until I've got it clean.
So, two questions, and I mean them for both of us.
What are you reaching for at 3pm, and again at 9?
And what actually fills you — not what you'd list if someone asked, but something specific you can point to from this week?
If the second question is harder to answer than the first, come walk the field with me. Slowly. It's the only pace that works out here.