That time I learned about balls

I wish I could give credit here where credit is due, but I honestly don't remember where I picked up this analogy. But I've told and retold it so often that I'm claiming it as my own. Its helped me prioritize during those crazy busy times when its not at all obvious what the most important thing to be working on is. And no, we're not talking about those type of balls.

In our work lives (and this could certainly apply to personal todos as well) it often feels like we're juggling, trying to keep all the balls in the air at once. But trying to keep all the balls in the air is an exhausting endeavor which often becomes a one way ticket to burnout land. So how to get the right things done without landing in Burnout Nation? This handy framework can serve as a guide for understanding which balls truly need your attention. The balls you're juggling aren't actually all the same, they're actually different types of balls. Let me explain.

Some of the balls you're juggling are actually bouncy balls. They can be dropped and they will bounce right back up, without any effort on your part. How to identify a bouncy ball? If it involves someone wanting to get money from you, its usually a bouncy ball. A great example is an email conversation with a salesperson. They're only going to make their commission if they hit their targets, so they're going to keep coming back at you, no effort required on your part. Another example was the time I secured a sponsorship for my college's hackathon. The students wanted their money, and were good at pestering me to get it. Bouncy balls are easy.

Bowling balls are still easy, just different. If you have a bowling ball, and you drop it, it lands with a thud at your feet but don't blow up in your face and don't go anywhere. Bowling balls are great because they will be patiently waiting there for you when you have the time to finally pay attention to them. You can reach down and grab that bowling ball, heft it back up, and it will be fully intact. An example of a bowling ball is recycling those Nespresso pods that have been sitting in a FedEx envelope in your trunk for months. Or doing that online training with a due date in the Very Far Away future. Delay it for a while and it will be patiently sitting there for when you have the time.

The final category of ball is the most delicate - the glass ball. These are the balls you can't drop because if you do, they'll break, shattering into a million pieces that are impossible to put back together. In the working world, a great example is a coordinated product launch. When you're bringing together threads from marketing, engineering, support and sales, moving a launch date is incredibly painful and often completely off the table. As a Product Manager, in those cases I've always focused on reducing the scope of a feature launch, rather than trying to move dates.

Similarly, I'd treat trust with you boss as a glass ball. It is not just a glass ball, its an expensive glass ball. You've had to work hard to earn it and dropping it doesn't just cost you the price of that glass ball, it makes the cost of creating the next glass ball of trust even more expensive.

If you can identify which type of ball you're juggling, you're one step closer to prioritization nirvana. If you know you've got some bouncy balls or a bowling ball or two, you can confidently drop them, knowing the bouncy ball will come back at you and the bowling ball will rest in a divot at your feet. There's a great feeling about being able to confidently drop a ball. And equally importantly, you can keep the glass balls like product launches or your health cared for and gracefully floating thru the air.

All of which will free you up to go with the flow "like a twig on the shoulders of a mighty stream" as one Del Griffith so aptly put it.