I started juggling when I was seven years old – first a few lacrosse balls, then pins, rings, torches, and finally companies. It’s an old truism among jugglers that learning to juggle will help managers become better at everything else they do – but I think it’s especially true for entrepreneurs. Here’s why:

1. The Nature of Juggling:

Juggling is, quite simply, not dropping the ball. If you take any task (marketing, engineering, testing, etc) and think of it as a ball that has to be moved forward, then you have a few options: You can push it along yourself (“moving the ball forward”), or you can toss it.

I like to think of “tossing the ball” as being planning and delegation – get it pointed in the right direction (planning), and give it enough force to carry it as far as it needs to go (delegate), before you’re going to catch it again (reporting loop).

Now let me point out a few things about REAL juggling:

Tossing and catching one ball at a time is a walk in the park – so easy, even most executives can handle it. Two balls is only slightly more interesting. When you hit three, all of a sudden you’ve got more balls, than you do hands. This is true juggling. Here are the tricks:

• Ignore the catches. If you have to be paying attention to catch a ball that’s in your field of vision, you need to put two balls back down and polish your skills. If you’re struggling to catch wide-flying balls, you can’t fix that with the catch. You’ve got to put your attention back on the throws.
• Ignore the throws. I know, I just told you to put your attention on them. But I was oversimplifying, just slightly. In point of fact, it’s impossible to change your throw by thinking about it – just like you don’t change your golf swing by thinking about the muscles in your calf. You just think about where you want to put the club. The same thing is true in juggling – just think about where you want the ball to go, and then let your arms do the work.
• Ignore the balls. You actually can’t do this on purpose, but when you get to the space where you “wake up” from juggling, and realize that your body has been doing all the work, with no extra help from you, well… professional athletes call this the “zone”, and they spend huge amounts of time and energy trying to get there. I don’t know of an easier way to do it than with juggling, and you’ll find yourself refreshed and ready to take on nearly anything.

The process of LEARNING to juggle is a lot like entrepreneurship, as well:

• You can practice with one or two balls all you want, but you can’t really learn to juggle without going for it – and dropping things.
• Each ball added makes things MUCH more difficult. Most folks (yes, even executives and MBAs) can be taught how to juggle three balls in just a couple of days. Learning a four-ball pattern takes, perhaps, a few months. Five balls usually takes YEARS, and represents a serious commitment. And only a few hundred people in the world can juggle seven.
• If you find yourself chasing the balls, i.e. walking or running around the room with each ball a little farther forward, then you’re already lost, and the balls are coming down. Better to catch them now, clean up your pattern and relaunch.

Some advanced tips for more extreme jugglers:

• Dropping a ball in 3-ball juggling is, generally speaking, game over. However, when you’re working with 4- or 5-ball patterns, you can simply “reduce your scope” while you work to get the dropped ball back up in the air. It’s HARD, and usually will involve dropping a few more until you’re practiced. Again, the best approach may be to catch everything and relaunch.
• If the balls aren’t all the same weight, you’re going to have problems. Perhaps you need to find another juggler and trade across until you’ve got a balanced set.
• Rhythm and pace are critical – there’s a natural speed to juggling, and the balls all need to move at the same speed. There’s no way to juggle with one ball being thrown twice as high as all the others, unless you’re practicing “shape distortion”. And the “right speed” to juggle at is a fact of your height, your skill-level, and the length of your arms. As long as you can keep the balls up in the air, don’t let anyone tell you to go faster.

Obviously I’m leaving it up to you to draw the parallels between juggling, and entrepreneurship. But trust me, they’re there. And I’ll leave you with one other thought:

1. When you’re learning to juggle, always practice with your off hand. (The left hand for right-handed people, the right hand for left-handed folks). Here’s why: if you learn how to do something (be it a simple toss or catch, or something more complex like a blindfolded penguin toss), with your off hand, you will automatically be able to do the same thing, with your dominant hand. But if you learn it with your dominant hand first, you’ll have to learn it all over again with your off hand.