Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

One key to learning how to juggle is to know how to drop something. The same is true for managing competing priorities and tasks.

Just about every “Help Wanted” ad I see has something in it about managing competing priorities or managing multiple tasks. I guess they want someone who can decide when to work on this instead of work on that.

Consider juggling, you know, tossing three or more balls in the air and catching them and so on. One of the keys to juggling is dropping a ball or just letting it fall to the ground and continue juggling the rest. If the juggler makes an extraordinary effort to retrieve an errant toss, everything falls apart. The extraordinary effort disturbs the balance and makes it impossible to continue to juggle the other balls.

Just let the ball fall to the ground and keep the other balls going.

The same lesson applies to juggling or managing tasks. Sometimes you just let a task fall to the ground. Using extraordinary efforts to keep that falling task going throws all the other tasks into chaos. Soon, all the tasks fail. Let one of them drop and keep the rest moving.

The same concept applies to many endeavors. Too many bills to pay? Let one of them drop to keep the others paid on time. Too many of anything? Let one drop to keep the others in good stead.

I hate this advice. I only tackle things that I can handle. I don’t admit failure and let something drop. Silly me. I have to get over that perfection rule and live in the real world. Let a ball fall to the ground.