Are You Juggling Rubber Balls or Glass Balls?

As an author, speaker or thought leader you are undoubtedly doing a lot of “stuff”. There’s travel, clients, speaking, writing, family, business, health and wellness. The list can easily be long and all of our days are only twenty four hours long. Many of us pride ourselves on our ability to multi task, to juggle a lot of balls, to jump from project to project at a break neck pace. Day in and day out.

How’s that been working out for you lately? What I observe in my work is that even the best jugglers drop balls on occasion and if you’re not a great juggler the frequency of dropped balls is pretty high. The issue is that not all of the balls we juggle are created equally. Some are made of rubber, they bounce back quickly and there’s really no harm done given they bounce back instantly. Other balls may be made of glass or crystal and we simply cannot drop them. They are incredibly fragile and expensive. If they drop they shatter to pieces and you simply cannot recover from the slip up. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, or how little sleep you pride yourself on needing, or your ability to accomplish twice what a mere mortal can in a typical day, things will get dropped.

The objective is to not be democratic in your juggling.

You have the ability, the power and the wisdom to choose what you can and cannot juggle. You can decide what to treat as if it were made of rubber and what to treat delicately as if it were made of fine crystal. Pause and segment:
all of the projects you currently have in the works
the inevitable back log of things you’d like to get to
the things you constantly get asked to do by colleagues, fans, clients or friends.
Place each item in an appropriate category so you can make better juggling choices. Remember not all balls are heirloom holiday ornaments and not all demands on your time are high priority, time critical needs.