A Plant That Teaches You How to Succeed

This is the Water Hyacinth, it is a little, beautiful plant I once read about in Jeff Olson’s The Slight Edge. As beautiful, little and delicate as the plant is, it is not one you would want around your water garden, because it’s an invasive species outside its native range. It will kill your plants quicker than the speed of light! The Water Hyacinth is not all that bad though, it also grows long roots that can grow up to 12 Centimeters in length. These roots can absorb impurities from water, by locking up floating particles from water, hence purifying the water. The peculiar danger though, about the Water Hyacinth is the speed at which it grows, apparently a single plant can produce as many as 5, 000 seed and it is said to colonize new areas by doubling itself – making it particularly dangerous to water gardens and one to watch out for.

The Water Hyacinth’s growth cycle is what I found particularly interesting; if a pond’s surface is still and undisturbed the Water Hyacinth can easily cover the entire pond in just thirty days. However on the first day to fourteenth day, you will notice hardly a thing in the pond; it is only on the fifteenth day that you might notice a single square foot of the pond’s surface covered, with a little dollop of colour dotting the expanse of the placid green. And on the Twentieth day you might see a small dense patch of floating foliage, which you would be forgiven if you took for a little boy’s raft left behind at a family picnic. On the Twenty Nineth day half of the pond’s surface would be coverd by a blanket of Water Hyacinth.

The plant demonstrates Olson’s Slight Edge principle, which advocates consistently/daily taking in incrimental steps towards your goal in order to gain an edge in that direction. We often find that like this plant when pursuing our goals it can be frustrating when we don’t yet see the physical results, of our hard work. However like the Water Hyacinth we ought to persevere despite not seeing physical results; it can especially be frustrating when people around you, criticize you for a lack of results – even in these circumstances persevere and remember that nay sayers will usually boo you until they see the results of your hard work. Furthermore often when we are pursuing our goals in the beginning results of your hard work may be minimal, and grow rapidly towards completion. Therefore, perserver and remember that you will rip most of the fruits of your hard work at the later stages of your goal persuasion.