You’re an accomplished juggler. Maybe not literally, but your calendar, however, is proof that you are, indeed, a whiz at juggling your time. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. Sometimes you feel like you’re being buried under the tasks on your schedule – running from obligation to obligation, completing work tasks and homework and household chores and family obligations and, maybe if you’re lucky, squeezing in some self-care time too.
You manage to make it work though. Maybe you drop one ball, the one where you sit and catch your breath, to make space to shuffle your son to voice lessons with time to drop your daughter off at martial arts class and you take a call from a client in the parking lot while you wait to pick one or the other up. You juggle.
Yet, here’s the thing: juggling your time isn’t necessarily the goal. Juggling can raise our anxiety as we struggle to keep things from dropping in our frantic efforts to get it all done. No, we don’t want to juggle. We want to balance. Balance allows us to do the things we must do without burning out in the process.
When we begin to spiral into champion juggler mode, everything tossed into the mix feels urgent. It may also feel like a ball only we can keep up in the air. Saying “no” (or even “not now” or “not me”) doesn’t cross our minds.
Yet, the reality is that not everything is urgent. Not everything is necessary. Not everything is ours to do alone. The first step to finding balance is to recognize that everything asked of us is not a priority. Everything that tries to edge its way onto our to-do list isn’t really ours to take on.
“No” is a complete sentence. It’s also a complete sentence that’s appropriate to use, as is “not at this time” and “not me, but let’s identify someone else on the team that may be able to take on this task.” If you’re suppressing the deep, overwhelmed sigh as you add yet another thing to your list of balls to keep in the air, go back and read that sentence again. It’s okay to say “no.” It’s okay to say “not now.” And it’s okay to say, “not me.”
Delegate what you can. When you’re overloaded, delegate tasks that don’t require your specific skill set and expertise. It’s okay to ask someone else on the team to handle the data entry or the print production or the first round of screening of the responses to the request for quotes you put out recently so you can be freed up to focus on other tasks that only you can do.
It’s okay to say, “I understand this task has a sense of urgency for you, but based on current workloads, I cannot meet your expected deadline. I can, however, turn this around for you next week.” It is not okay to shuffle aside your own self-care or personal obligations to add more hours to your workday to accommodate every request that comes in when it comes in.
What’s of utter importance today may need to take a back seat tomorrow. Yes, today, that big meeting you’re preparing for should have your attention. It should be the thing that other things take a back seat for. Tomorrow, however, may require you to shift gears and put focus into something related to a family member’s health while you delegate meeting related tasks to others on your team.
You don’t need to always do everything with equal urgency. You don’t need to do it all on your own. Be comfortable reprioritizing your time instead of trying to make it all happen at once when curveballs come up.
Raise a hand if you relish that dopamine hit that comes with checking something off your to-do list. There is something deeply satisfying about checking the boxes of completion. It can become tempting to just finish one more task to make one more checked box. The same list can overwhelm us when we don’t see enough checked boxes. We may press and we scurry and we work head down to whittle down that list.
If that sounds familiar, make your to-do list work for you. Build in breaks and self-care tasks to your to-do list. Make taking care of you worthy of your time and task management skills.
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