Juggling Invisible Balls

Some Juggling is an INSIDE Job

Part 2 of a 2-part article;
another in a entire series of excerpts from
my upcoming book, TaskMaster™ – see article list below

Juggling invisible balls is my term for our conscious attempts to screen out persistent, irrelevent, or intrusive, off-task, background “noise.”

“Noise” refers to input from any modality (an area of information processing using our sensory apparatus) — with “juggling” a metaphor to help us understand the mechanism by which we handle life’s many demands.

In the previous TaskMaster Series article, Taking Your Functional Temperature, I introduced several analogies that help illuminate what’s going on “behind the scenes” to help explain WHY we struggle with focus — and WHY we struggle in ways that make it difficult-to-impossible to get things done.

If you haven’t read the previous article, I STRONGLY suggest you start there, or I doubt the content below will be as valuable to you as it could be.

In this second section, we’re going to take a closer look at some of the reasons why functioning can be so erratic.

As I said in the first part of this article, on an average day, you may well be able to handle a great many things that, on another day, you simply cannot.

• It makes sense ONLY if you start becoming aware of – and counting – invisible balls, so that you can better predict your functioning level BEFORE you attempt to take on more than you can manage.

• Part of the value of ADD Coaching is helping you develop the habit of taking your functional temperature to help you take on the type and number of tasks that will keep you stimulated but not overwhelmed.

You will find tasks easier to manage if you learn to think of your day as if it were one long juggling performance for the Red Queen.  You plan what objects you TAKE to her palace, but you determine the order of your performance in the moment, so that the objects don’t come crashing down around you to the tune of, “Off with your head!”

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