3 Strategies to Refine Your Time Juggling Skills

Years ago while at a Renaissance Faire, I stopped by a juggling booth thinking it’d be fun to learn the basics of juggling. Seems that my eye-hand coordination wasn’t up to the task!

I’m still fascinated by juggling. The person starts with two or three balls. Then they add another and another until there is a dizzying swirl of objects flying in a circle around the juggler. Catch & release. Catch & release. At some point, either a ball falls or the juggler stops because he or she knows that you can only have so many balls up in the air at a time.

In many ways, we are like that juggler. We have jobs, household responsibilities, social obligations, volunteer activities, etc. Sometimes it feels like we have so many balls in the air that they will all come crashing down at once and give us a headache! Or maybe we feel like throwing them all up in the air at the same time and rushing into a cave so that we can escape. The crazy thing is that many of us add balls without getting rid of any! This usually results in balls falling more rapidly and possibly rolling away never to be found again. While this may sound like relief, usually it means that we have “dropped the ball” on some responsibility.

And I”m just talking about “regular” life, not one impacted by a life-disrupting situation.

So how do you decide which balls to delete from your juggling routine? Try these three strategies below.

Strategy #1: Briefly address some of your distractions so that you can then fully set them aside. 

If you are juggling blue, red, green, yellow, and purple balls, you may have to put all of them down and put the yellow ones in another location in order to concentrate on the blue, red, green, and purple ones. The location for the yellow ones may be in a container marked “low priority, complete next month”. They may be handed off to someone else who can juggle them more efficiently (delegation). They may even be completely deleted from your collection of juggling balls because they aren’t a color you want to juggle anymore. So by paying brief attention to the yellow balls, you can more easily juggle the others.

Strategy #2: Schedule time to clean-up and re-prioritize your to-do list.

Some of your balls may have gotten dirty during your frantic juggling sessions. They have fallen on the floor or on the dirt; they have been touched with gooey hands, etc. In fact, they make look more black, brown, or speckled than their original colors. Time to put them in the wash cycle! Place them in a sink filled with bubbly water. They might need to soak for a few minutes. You may need to scrub them a little. Some of them may be “beyond repair” so they can be permanently deleted.

The remaining balls may be juggled in a different order. For instance, instead of starting with blue, you start with the green balls. You decide to add the purple balls second instead of the red balls, etc. It is okay to juggle the balls in a different order. In fact, sometimes it is better to change the order! Over time situations change and so should priorities.

Strategy #3: Discover the pause.

I looked up the Guinness World Record for juggling. There are several. Here are the two that caught my eye: the most balls juggled is 11 and the most catches in one minute while juggling three balls is 586.

These numbers tell me a couple of things:

• Practice is crucial. These records didn’t happen overnight. It took years of practice.
• Specialization focuses your practice time. Each record was set by a different person. As such, when training, they were working on a select set of skills.
• Breaks are essential. Their arms got tired. Their focus wavered. They had to take some time off.

We must remember to put the balls down and take pauses. Some might be short and others longer, however, making time for self-care is critical.

What one very small action can you take today to increase your proficiency in “time juggling”?

Typing your “one very small action” in the comments below will make you more likely to take action!