Juggling should be left to professional jugglers, who can sustain objects in air for periods of time. Those who aren’t professional jugglers should work on balancing their lives, instead of juggling them. That’s the philosophy behind Beyond Juggling: Rebalancing Your Busy Life, written by Kurt Sandholtz, Brooklyn Derr, Kathy Buckner, and Dawn Carlson.
“When we started out we had a goal: to make a difference and do some good,” said Derr, Marriott School professor of organizational behavior.
Through 150 interviews with professionals, theories began evolving from their observations. Buckner says the juggling metaphor came up frequently during the interviews. “People juggle when they have more things in the air than they have hands; they just ignore one for awhile, catch it before it hits the ground, and throw it back up in the air. It’s very difficult to keep it up for long,” she says.
Sandholtz said juggling didn’t work well for the people they interviewed. “There was no joy in work or in personal lives because so much was going on,” he said.
Instead of juggling, the authors suggest people try different strategies to balance their lives: alternating, outsourcing, bundling, techflexing, and simplifying. The book offers assessments and explanations of these different balancing strategies. “Almost anybody can have more balance,” Buckner said. “It will take discipline, but the payoff is worthwhile.”
