Less is more

Now that I have returned to my own home the blogging might well resume. I'm thinking about this thinning business. I have never been someone good at having my fingers in lots of pies and so having two part-time jobs plus another occasional contract job on the side, plus the Rest Of Life is, I'm starting to think, more taxing on my brain and general well-being than a single full-time job might be, or at least a single job. The employment extravaganza started because when I started earning my own way instead of support raising I took everything offered to me in case any one of those offers didn't pan out. Now I'm in a better position to be somewhat more selective so it's a question of thinning my employment and knowing what to take out and what to let grow. Which, since my most promising job is a hefty commute, means deciding how that weighs in and/or if I want to move closer in order to unheft the commute, and in order to have a dose of the urban city life before I retire to my gypsy caravan in the country. Since I generally find I want a different thing every day, and don't seem to be able to fix on anything with any great consistency, it's hard to know, but at least now I know I want to be paid for it, so that's progress I suppose. 
Assuredly shrub-thinning is a work of great importance, only a degree less so than planting. It is nothing without a plan and system well thought out before the removal of a single plant or branch. It is necessary to see through several trees at once, and have in mind a clear impression of what the effect will be when the work is done. If the operator cannot fully see and appreciate the work when it is done, even before a stroke is made, he had better leave things as they are and submit to a greater muddle, lest he should make one still greater.
The Journal of Horticulture, Cottage Gardener and Country Gentleman (1874). God bless Google books.

Fruitfulness is best ensured by a moderate degree of pruning, consisting in the thinning of the branches, so that light and air may have better access to the remainder...Vigour is imparted to the remaining branches when a plant is closely cut in, provided the roots are healthy and active; for in this case, the roots having but a limited demand to meet, are enabled to provide sap more freely to the remaining parts, which consequently push forth with much more than ordinary strength.

Annals of Horticulture (1850)