A recent quote by James Clear, using a garden-analogy, offers a powerful lesson for long-term investors:

“Environment can multiply (or divide) your effort. Before you plant the garden, study the soil. After you plant the garden, tend the weeds.”

This quote struck me because it captures something investors often overlook.

We talk endlessly about markets, asset allocation, fund selection, and performance. We debate forecasts and analyse macro risks.

Rarely do we pause to ask: In what environment are our investment decisions being made?

Yet this question matters. Because in investing, just like gardening, environment quietly determines outcomes.

The Soil 

No experienced gardener starts with seeds. They first assess the soil: Is it fertile? Is it suitable? What needs adjustment?

Investors often do the opposite. They focus on performance, forecasts, and consensus before examining their foundation. They plant before they prepare.

The soil in investing is internal.

In investing, the soil is not the market. It is you.

It is your mindset, values, time horizon, desired outcomes, and emotional triggers. Clarity about what you are optimising for, why it matters, and which trade-offs you accept is essential.

Without this clarity, every headline captures your attention and every drawdown feels like failure.

Even the best strategy will struggle if the internal foundation is unstable.

The Environment Multiplies Effort

Willpower is fragile. It fades when you are tired, when markets are volatile, and when noise and comparison intensify. In those moments, short-term losses feel threatening and discipline weakens.

Environment, however, does the heavy lifting. This is behavioural reality, not motivation.

A well-designed environment reduces unnecessary decisions, limits emotional triggers, and aligns daily actions with long-term goals. The right behaviour becomes the path of least resistance.

Over time, it is not intention that compounds. It is your behaviour and behaviour is shaped by structure.

The Predictable Mistake

Investors often plant what is fashionable and what others are talking about. They check the garden daily for growth. This creates a predictable cycle that moves you from excitement to impatience. From impatience to doubt and behavioural self-sabotage.

A seed does not grow faster because you dig it up regularly to check it.

The Weeds

James Clear’s second instruction is equally important: “After you plant the garden, tend the weeds.”

In investing, weeds are not market corrections. They are behavioural distractions: social media noise, emotional reactions to headlines, peer comparison, and over-monitoring that leads to mid-cycle strategy changes.

Left unattended, these behaviours quietly derail the plan.

Disciplined investors address this in advance through pre-committed rebalancing rules, agreed review schedules, and clear decision-making guardrails. Open communication between advisor and client reinforces the structure.

Weeding, in investing, is the quiet maintenance that over time protects everything.

The Advisor’s Role: Designing the Right Environment

The advisor’s role goes far beyond product selection. It is about designing the decision-making environment before capital is deployed.

Together, advisor and investor must define what they are trying to achieve, why it matters, how progress will be measured, what noise will be ignored, and what behavioural commitments will guide them when markets become uncomfortable.

This upfront clarity creates alignment. It replaces reaction with a shared framework that was agreed upon.

You cannot rely on motivation during volatility or on willpower during drawdowns, but you can rely on structure.

In investing, structure and process will always outperform willpower.

 

Written by Marius Kilian

 

Source

*Inspired by a blog: James Clear, “3 Ideas from Me”, jamesclear.com, 20 Jan 2026