I started my own company 10 years ago. After about 15 years of working in corporate America, I decided to strike out on my own and see if I could make a go at this thing. In the last decade, I would estimate that I have: Read 500 books Talked with 100+ mentors Collected 10,000+ ideas in notebooks Written millions of words Spoken to 339 companies That last one is not an estimate, that’s the exact number of companies I’ve visited for keynotes, breakouts and training sessions. (Here’s how to book me for your team: jonacuff.com/speaking.) I can say with no exaggeration that the best idea I learned in that entire time, the one that helped my business, marriage, finances and health the most, was this: The Law of the Harvest. It only has one tenet – you reap what you sow. Sometimes, despite enjoying its benefits, I wish it was more complicated than that because then I could act confused why a situation is not working. But theLaw of the Harvest is like gravity, it works whether I believe in it or not. I don’t need to believe in gravity for it to work, it just does. When I get up in themorning, I can’t jump 100 feet in the air regardless of whether or not I believe in gravity. It’s just gravity, relentless, consistent, dependable. The Law of the Harvest is the same and here’s the promise it makes all of us: “You will either enjoy the rewards of the decisions you made or suffer theconsequences of the mistakes you chose.” I’ve experienced both in the last 10 years. When I demand a harvest I have not planted, I am entitled. When I dream of rewards I will not work for, I am foolish. When I plant today and expect results tomorrow, I am impatient. When I compare myself to other farms and desire the results they have while ignoring the effort they invested, I am ignorant. But, when I work the small plot of land I have, when I am faithful to the seeding, the weeding, the tilling, the digging, the draining, the waiting, I get to harvest. I get to steward what I’ve been given. One of my favorite things I’ve read about this law is, “Those who work their land will have abundant food, but those who chase fantasies lack judgment.” I like that proverb because it’s a filter for me, a way to prioritize where I spend my time and my energy. “Is this my land or is this a fantasy?” I ask myself when sorting through opportunities. No one will run your miles for you. No one will write your pages for you. No one will raise your kids for you. No one will start your business for you. No one will get in shape for you. The government won’t. Your boss won’t. Your parents won’t. Therein lies thefirst of three problems with the law of the harvest. Problem 1: Personal responsibility is not popular. Life offers you a simple choice: blame or progress. You get to pick one or theother and culture has a clear preference. I don’t blame them, pun intended. Blame is so much easier than personal responsibility because the only body part it takes is my finger. It’s easier to point the finger than it is to use my legs and my arms to get in shape. It’s easier to point the finger than it is to admit I might not have had a hand in causing a problem, but I always have a hand in fixing it. It’s easier to point the finger than it is to do the hard work of changing my circumstances. I had to apologize to my parents a few months ago because I had been blaming them for some of my bad decisions. It was easier to say, “If my parents had taught me something at 14, I would have made a different decision at 44.” But 30 years later, do you know who is in charge of Jon Acuff’s decisions? Jon Acuff. I had to own my decisions before I could start changing them. Problem 2: It’s a both/and situation. Opponents of the Law of the Harvest like to point out all the exceptions. I agree with them, there are plenty. For instance, I spent 7 years getting ready for thebest year of public speaking I’d ever had. I did hundreds of events, built thousands of relationships and wrote book upon book for a big harvest that I anticipated. Do you know what year that was supposed to happen? 2020. Do you know what happened instead? Every live event got cancelled. The harvest got destroyed and it was completely out of my control. But when there’s a drought, does a farmer declare, “Farming doesn’t work?” When there’s a flood, does a farmer proclaim, “Planting is therefore false?” Of course not. I am convinced that part of maturing as an adult is the ability to believe two seemingly opposite things at the same time. The Law of the Harvest is in your control. A lot of life is out of your control. It’s not either/or, it’s both/and. Problem 3: The Law of the Harvest is boring. There’s a Soundtrack(amzn.to/3NT3X69) that I’ve found myself saying a lot lately – “Excellence is boring.” I’ve been saying it because it’s true and it encourages me to keep doing the little things that a harvest always requires. I used to think a life of excellence was full of home runs, dramatic moments and sexy overnight success. Ten years later, I no longer believe that. Excellence is thank you notes, follow up phone calls, early morning flights, taking careful notes, editing the idea a 10th time, sending another email, preparing the report, and about a thousand other small moments. They’re boring, that’s why no one does them. According to studies, the average NFL game has about 15-20 minutes of live action. That means in a 16-game season, a player is in motion a total of 5.3 hours. Most of them have spent 15 years to get there. We see the highlights, the sliver of time, but there’s a mountain ofsowing that has happened off camera. They spend 365 days a year to play for 5.3 hours in an entire season. That’s a whole lot of boring. This is not new information. Solomon said it first and then every motivational writer who followed repeated it. Occasionally though, I forget this simple truth and fight it to my utter frustration. When my Twitter audience declined in 2023, I said out loud, “That’s weird, I didn’t work on Twitter at all for a year and it magically shrunk somehow.” I got the exact harvest I planted, which was nothing. When I read 100 books in 2023, I said out loud, “When you make time for reading, you read a lot.” Another miracle. Who can possibly figure out how that happened? When my 9th book, All It Takes Is A Goal(amzn.to/45znFgm), came out last September, I was not surprised to see it hit the shelves. That was a harvest. I planted that one a long time ago. I don’t control the sales, I don’t control whether it catches a cultural wave, but I do control that it gets written. I do control that it gets researched. I do control that it gets edited. I do control that every detail is thought out. I do control that harvest. So do you, in a hundred different ways. Don’t fight this law. Embrace it a lot faster than I did. You will either enjoy the rewards of the decisions you made or suffer theconsequences of the mistakes you chose. Rewards are a lot more fun. Jon (I wrote this for my free newsletter, the “Try This!” Sign up today to get ideas just like this, twice a month. Acuff.me/newsletter)