Juggling

Learning to juggle

In my early forties, I decided to learn how to juggle. I asked for the book Juggling for the Complete Klutz for my birthday and my daughter Tegan obliged and gave to me. Her inscription alludes to the “Culler Curse,” which  is a certain clumsiness. I invented the “curse”  in response to my brother-in-law’s constant teasing about how we Cullers were always dropping things, falling upstairs and generally making a mess of things. I joked that this was due to the  “Culler Curse” bestowed upon our family in perpetuity by a witch in medieval times “so the Cullers wouldn’t rule the world.”  “So far,  I noted “that part of the ‘curse’ seems to be holding true.”

I was thirteen and thought that wisdom had nothing whatsoever to do with a quiet and mindful existence, but everything to do with “cracking wise,” being able to deliver the zinger, the killer sarcastic remark. The “Culler Curse” name stuck and is now a family legacy. The other thing that stuck is that I now have children and at least three of my four grandchildren who have assumed virtue in the “smart remark.”

So I asked for the “Complete Klutz” book on juggling. The book came with three bean bag cubes, which early on the authors explain is to “reduce the chaos factor. . .  learning to juggle is really about dropping things.  As you will learn this is frustrating enough without dropping things that also roll away from you rapidly.”

The book was quite encouraging:
“So you’re interested in learning how to juggle, but it took you four years to learn how to tie your shoes, and besides dropping things has always been second nature to you. . . . you’re an original Klutz and you probably think juggling is only for the super coordinated?

RELAX. . . IT’S SIMPLE.”

It wasn’t. But I did finally learn the basics. I even graduated from bean bags, to kushes (A Kush is pictured above – colorful and they also don’t roll.) and finally to tennis balls, fruits and vegetables, even three things of different sizes and shape..

Do I feel I mastered juggling? No way. I never even tried juggling those club things and knives and chainsaws? Not me.

But I got good enough to show off occasionally. I told a friend I was leaning to juggle, thinking he’d ask for a demonstration. He said,

“I look at your life (divorced father of three, starting a consulting business, and training for a marathon), learning to juggle is redundant.”

Perhaps my life at the time was why I wanted to learn to juggle.  I wanted to do learn something physical that was fun. Don’t get me wrong, I loved running, but training for a marathon isn’t fun like a casual Sunday morning jog. And three kids are a different kind of fun. Learning to juggle took focus, took me out of myself, and a dropped ball didn’t have disastrous consequences.  (However I recommend against juggling tomatoes until you are really good)

So why am I writing about juggling now..

My children are now grown and I look at their lives. They all work very hard; some are managing children, some just spouse and/or friend relationships. Working was tough even before the Covid pandemic with its lack of division between work and home, zoom calls, texts from your boss at 8:00 p.m., not having a tech guy when working from home, or overtime and extra shifts that you didn’t ask for, because someone is “quarantining,” if you have the kind of job that must be done on site.

Everybody is juggling now, some better than others and there is no Juggling for the Complete Klutz  for this kind of juggling.

I have read many job descriptions that call for the skill of ”multitasking, juggling by another name.” Most people actually think that multitasking is a real skill and many feel bad about themselves because they have difficulty mastering it.

Multitasking is a myth.

No. I really mean that. Our brain has two different modes:

System 1 (as Daniel Kahneman calls it in Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow) is our conscious brain, with which we focus, solve problems, plan and control and rule the world. System one is really powerful, but it can literally do only one thing at a time. On average most people use the Conscious brain about 10% of the time.

System 2, is autopilot, which most of us use about 90% of the time. This is a good thing because System 2 does a lot of the brain’s work without our conscious attention. The System 2 brain is extraordinarily good at pattern recognition and frequency gambling. It sees a pattern it has seen before, quickly calculates the frequency and makes the same decision it has seen most frequently.

For example, I get up I the morning, put what I sleep in in a place, brush my teeth, take some meds and supplements and take a shower. Most days I’m dressed and at breakfast before I am engaging my conscious brain.

“Not me!” You say “I am mindful.” OK. When you drive do you put exactly the same level of focus and attention to every part of driving that you did when you were learning?  Or are there things you do where you describe yourself as “in-the-zone, “ or “perfect flow,” -a golf swing or tennis stroke, things you have learned so well that you “know” how to do them without thinking. That’s System 2.

So most people when they say they are multitasking, typing away on their computer while talking on the phone, or cooking dinner while listening to books on Audible, are really switch-tasking. Switch-tasking is focus on the dinner for a moment  , let the book go on autopilot, switch cut the onions on autopilot, focus on the action in the book.

Switch tasking is like juggling. Focus on throwing one beanbag, SWITCH – focus on catching one-Switch- focus on throwing – switch-  catching-switch-throwing switch -DROP-DARNIT! Focus on picking everything up again.

The trick with switch tasking, like juggling, is not to drop things and it takes some skill to knowing when to switch to System 1. Some things, like driving, like pouring hot liquids, like checking pressures in a process chemical plant, should always be done in System1 and not on autopilot.

Some people are better at switch-tasking than others than others. I’m told that air traffic controllers and jet pilots tend to test better than the general population. I don’t know what the test is like -Whack-a-Mole-on Steroids?

Many women have told me that women are better at multitasking than men. When I patiently explain that “Multi-tasking is a myth; what you’re doing is switch-tasking,” if they are still talking to me, they say something like, “OK then, women are better at switch-tasking than men.”

I have no data on this subject, but I’m smart enough not to discuss this further. It seems true that in many cases women are asked to juggle more than men and switch-tasking, like juggling, is a skill that responds to practice. The more you do it the better you get.

I never got beyond juggling three items. Juggling four is an order of magnitude more difficult. Perhaps that is why many people have such difficulty juggling, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs.

It seems to me that during Covid we asked workers to juggle more, do more switch-tasking. As we come out of Covid I am concerned that won’t change much. So here are some thoughts from my learning how to juggle:

Step 1:  Recognize you are juggling.

In actual juggling this is less of a problem, but the Complete Klutz Guide did have me practicing throwing one bean bag in the air letting it drop to the floor, then picking it up. “You’ll do this a lot so you might as well practice.” Probably you don’t want to practice dropping the balls you are juggling (switch-tasking), but it is good to be aware of them, maybe ask for some forgiveness in advance, ‘cause you may drop something.

Don’t just include work stuff in the stuff you are juggling. Dr. Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth century English writer once said,

“Second Marriages are the Triumph of Hope over Experience.”

I can attest that to be true, but it’s wisdom you should learn from the experience of others rather than go through it personally.

Step 2: Take it slow at first.

The Klutz book had a natural progression 1 bag-2-bagsunderhand -2 bags overhand- 3 bags underhand-3 bags overhand. Then there were a lot of different practice exercises with 3 bags. The book then moved on to 3 things of different sizes, then to clubs and that is where I bailed, never moving to sharp objects, or four, five or six of anything.

Step 3: Know your limits.

I mentioned my juggling limits, no clubs, no sharps, no soft vegetables. (Although I admit to have learned this last lesson with tomatoes over an oriental rug. My sister wasn’t pleased.)

I had a client who repeatedly said “If you need something done, give it to a busy person. They always find a way to get it done.” When I was a consultant, I had a boss who tested this theory with me. We were in a period of extreme staffing crunch -too much work, too few consultants. He kept assigning me to new projects. When I got to eight projects, I began to drop things, make mistakes, and miss deliverables.

Like juggling, we can improve at switch-tasking with practice, but sometimes the practice is more painful. One advantage to actual juggling is all that bending over to pick up dropped balls is very good for developing the core.