Calling All Plate Jugglers!

Multitasking has been a thing now for at least a quarter of a century. Thanks, technology. It's a great ideal: doing multiple things at the same time to increase efficiency and productivity. It's great if you can do it. Most of us can't.

If a task (by definition) is something to get done (and it is), then keeping a lot of plates spinning up in the air is only as good a trick as your success in keeping them in the air. If they're falling around you...if there are crashes and smashes at your feet...let's call that what it really is...multithrashing!

<awkward pause>

Okay, so, being retired, I have more time to observe what's going on across the edu-landscape, and it's concerning for someone who only wants the best for his peers. There's a frenzy of activity making it difficult to focus on the details and the follow-through of what everyone is trying to accomplish.

People are unable to keep up with their inboxes, responding to requests without understanding the asks, blowing off appointments, agreeing to commitments they can't keep and sitting in meetings working on non-meeting tasks - all in an effort to put out the fires that demand the most immediate attention. It's exhausting for them....it's exhausting to watch!

Most importantly, it undermines best intentions, effectiveness and success.

On the giving end, you may not even realize all the plates you've dropped you're so busy moving forward tending to whatever is in front of you. It creates a sense of purpose and engagement, and it isn't your problem if you can't keep track of the trail you've left behind you. Right?

Being on the receiving end, on the other hand, is a very different experience. When you let people down, you're teaching them that they can't depend on you to follow through. While you're frantically trying to be a hard-working professional in good standing with everyone, you eventually realize people are no longer coming around. They can't afford to have their plates keep hitting the ground, so they move on.

If you've read this far, you're aware. So what can you do?

• pay attention to the details of the work

• manually fill in and follow your calendar

• sequence your day like it's a timeline

• follow through on each task to its completion

• check in on important relationships

• build a reputation of solid reliability

• hold yourself accountable

It's not rocket science, but if it were easy everyone would be doing it. Practice better routines until they become better habits and you will be more successful. Handling fewer plates makes for fewer drops and better results.

A longtime friend and colleague recently shared that her entire workload fell out from under her when new management came in and wasn't planning on keeping her. They honestly didn't seem to be aware of her role or her work focus. Scrambling to figure out how to recover and keep her job, she suddenly realized she recognized a face on the new management team from the past. She reached out and they wound up reconnecting over their past work together. In fact, she had built such an excellent working relationship with this person, the new management team sat up, took notice, and wound up inviting her to stay on and continue to lead her project. She never imagined what she was doing back in the day would eventually come back to save her skin! She had always valued doing good work and following through on her commitments, and it was paying off.

The moral?

Stop keeping excessively busy and start taking care of business - one commitment at a time.

This isn't a circus unless you make it one!

You won't be responsible for as many plates in the air, but the plates you tend to will stay in one piece and be useful to others when it's time to hand them off.

No overpromising and underdelivering. No dropped plates. Just good work. And when you earn that trust, it will serve you well the rest of your career. Promise!

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The Worthy Educator is now accepting interested plate jugglers

into its summer Championing cohort, running May-August,

and we would be honored to count you among us.

Learn more and register here!