JUGGLING TIPS
Juggling is great art and exercise. It is tied to agility and some studies show it can even increase brain capacity. It is a unique characteristic of humans to be able to manage more things at one time than hands.
When we use our minds instead of our hands, it is called multi-tasking. I won’t get into the debate as to whether people (or anything) can genuinely multi-task, but I know most of us will attempt to do so. Especially leaders and busy executives.
But here’s a few things you should know about juggling (multi-tasking).
It is more challenging to juggle items of differing weights and sizes. BIG D decisions are the ones that “move the needle” of your business. Little d decisions are routine. If you find yourself juggling BIG D and little d decisions, delegate the little d’s.
It is easier to add one more item than to put one down. The amount of time your “hands” spend with each item and its speed are uniform for balance. You spend the same time on each item, making prioritization difficult, making short tasks longer and long tasks even longer. When you want to put an item down, you may have to stop completely, make an adjustment, and start again.
When you drop an item, it will not necessarily be the last one you picked up. When your juggling is going well, it is tempting to add just one more thing. However, when juggling fails it is a loss of control and the ball that gets dropped is random. And in a severe failure, you may end up dropping everything.
Another thing that can make juggling easier is another pair of hands. After all, two heads are better than one.
If you are interested in learning how to juggle more effectively, contact me here.
“Juggling and balancing effectively required that we make clear, legacy-driven choices about what we’re trying to keep in the air and how we sequence our movements down the beam. Because the ultimate grade in life is not based on how far and fast we’ve walked the beam or how many things we’ve juggled—it’s based on how much we’ve enjoyed the exercise.”
― Eric C. Sinoway