What to drop when you can't do it all

It's a long holiday weekend and we're finally getting some sweet, sweet sunshine here in the Chicago suburbs.

The summer vibes are contagious and inescapable.

I want to conquer the world and laze around in my backyard at the same time.

So here's what's on my brain.

When we talk about juggling balls and keeping balls in the air and not dropping balls, we assume all balls across all the spheres of our lives are equal.

But they're not.

Here's my favorite analogy:

Each of us has many different balls we're trying to juggle. Some are made of glass and some are made of rubber. The glass ones cannot be dropped because they will absolutely shatter. The rubber ones can be dropped because they will bounce back.

The trick is figuring out which balls are which and then strategically dropping the rubber ones to catch a glass one.

So what does this look like in practice?

It's spending all of Memorial Day running around with my toddler (glass ball) and using nap time to work through the June resourcing plan for our agency's contractors (glass ball) but then spending more on food and grocery delivery (rubber ball) to keep us all fed in the chaos.

It's deciding to deprioritize or delegate a ticket (rubber ball) while pulling data for the big board presentation (glass ball).

It's having an honest conversation with an executive to figure out how fast they actually need a response from me (i.e. are they a glass or rubber ball).

We literally cannot have everything at once. But we can absolutely make better choices about the things we do want to have.

See you next week,

🫶🏽 Alysha