Glass Balls vs Plastic Balls
Choosing which ones to drop as we go back to school
Following on from Vicky’s post about tending to your lily pads, here’s another analogy for all the elements you have to juggle in your life. But instead of lily pads, it’s balls!
I recently read (or re-read as I’ve seen it before) the analogy of everything in your life being a ball you’re juggling. Some of the balls are glass and some are plastic. If you drop a plastic ball, it bounces. But the glass balls break. You have to decide which of the 76 things you’re juggling are plastic and which are glass.
I did some hunting around and found this source from Jennifer Lynn Barnes (that’s a Twitter link but it’s also on Reddit). She in turn heard prolific novelist Nora Roberts talk about it.
It reads:
“One time, I was at a Q&A with Nora Roberts, and someone asked her how to balance wiring and kids, and she said the key to juggling is to know that some of the balls you have in the air are made of plastic and some of glass.
And if you drop a plastic ball, it bounces, no harm done. If you drop a glass ball, it shatters so you have to know which balls are glass and which are plastic and prioritize catching the glass ones.
I think about this ALL THE TIME. I dropped more than one ball today. It is hard to drop any ball, and I hate it! But they were plastic, and tomorrow, it’ll be okay.
As this has gone viral, I have seen a lot of people interpreting this as “your kids are the glass ball” and/or referring to speeches made by men about juggling five balls where work in plastic and family is glass.
That’s not what Nora was saying in this case.
Nora was not talking about juggling five balls. She was talking about juggling FIFTY-FIVE balls. The balls don’t just represent “family” or “work”. There are separate things that go into each of these categories. “Deadline on Project Y” or “crazy sock day at school”.
And her point, addressing a room full of women, was not “prioritize kids over work”. It was, “some kid stuff is glass and some is plastic, and sometimes to catch a work glass ball you have to drop a family plastic one, and that is okay.”
And the reverse is also true. Sometimes to catch a kid glass ball, something at work has to slide, and that is okay too.
If you are juggling 55 balls, some are going to drop, and you have to focus not on broad categories but on the glass balls.”
Jennifer Lynn Barnes, 2020.
Similar to Vicky’s lily pad analogy, we’re not designating one ball, or lily pad, to be work, and one to be kids. Each of these categories has multiple balls within them with their own priorities and their own consequences if they’re dropped.
I’m writing this in the last week of the summer break so right now some of my glass balls include:
WORK
A book project 🤫
Organizing a monthly book community get together
Writing this newsletter, and my own one:
FAMILY
Back to school for my two (aargh!) middle schoolers
Birthday gift for a 13 year old
Birthday gift for an 11 year old
Back to school athletic packets for both kids
Meal planning and grocery shopping
Dog walking every day
If all the dog walks were by the ocean I’d probably never drop the ball
SELF
Twice-weekly strength workouts
Schedule my mammogram.
My plastic balls are things like taking stuff to Goodwill, updating my website, and social media posting. Social media is something I will need to pick up again at some point, but right now it’s not a priority. And I need to update my website but again it’s not urgent. If I don’t do it right now, this week or even next, nothing will happen. Those plastic balls will bounce. And there might be some plastic balls that I drop that it turns out weren’t all that important after all.
You could also think about which of these balls can be passed to someone else. Who is on your team? Over summer I passed some of my balls like “walk the dog” and “do your laundry” on to my kids. Maybe some of the glass balls can be streamlined - can I buy gift cards for the birthday presents? Maybe I can buy a meal plan or write a bunch that I rotate each week?
Over to you, how do you prioritize everything on your to-do list? What are your glass and plastic balls? Do you pass on some of these balls to other people in your life?
I’m milking summer and considering everything a plastic ball! 😂 Except for feeding my family, I guess.