Starting with a clean plate
This is my life
Well, this is how I try to live my life. Looks hectic, intense, stressful and downright crazy. But, as you can see in the video, the person in the video is smiling. Looks to be having fun.
This is some people in this world. Not all, but some. I am one of those people. I feel the best and operate the best when I am just slightly overwhelmed. There is so much that is taking place in this video beyond just the plate spinning and other tricks. This is probably one of the best time management and overall management videos ever made.
What can we learn from this?
- Have fun out there
- Be in the moment versus staying focused
- What being “agile” really means
- Observability is key
- Being flexible and move past errors, mistakes are not the end of the world
Having Fun
So throughout the video, Eric Brenn is smiling, goofing around and having fun. If you are not enjoying what you are doing, the whole process is going to feel rather pointless. Plus everything will feel way harder than it actually is. There is an old saying that “if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life”. I tend to feel that this gets misinterpreted a lot (at least from my perspective). Some people seem to think this means turn your hobby (or something you enjoy) into your occupation. However, most people find that not only do they stop enjoying their hobby, they also don’t get to do it as much.
I could write a whole blog post about this but simply put, hobbies are what you do to forget about work. Turning your hobby into work is the exact opposite of what that phrase is trying to teach you.
The true point of the phrase is to find a way to have fun with what you have to do. A ditch digger has a crappy job but can have fun with it by joking around with their co-workers, or pretend it’s like going to the beach. Everyone’s method is different but the key to figuring out how to make it through a workday is to figure out how to enjoy the work.
Be In The Moment
A lot of athletes refer to this as “being in the zone”. I differentiate this from staying focused because there are times when you do need to stay focused on one particular task. But “being focused” is a singular moment in as series of moments. You can’t spin bowls, spin plates, flip spoons and put eggs in glasses if you are “staying focused” on a single thing. As you can see in the video, the focus times are when spinning up a plate or a bowl. Then going out of focus to review the state of things to determine the next thing to focus on. The trick is to constantly shift your focus, be aware of your surroundings, adjust to what has priority and address things that need attention. In some way it’s a constant shifting of focus. If one was to focus on one thing, everything else would fall over.
Conversely, being in the moment also means shutting out distractions, being present and aware of what is going on around you. It involves tuning out non-relevant things and not adding more things that require your attention. (Not sure this trick would work in the age of cell phones)
One other aspect people tend to forget about, the video clip is just under 7 minutes long. Being in the moment doesn’t mean you have to spend your entire life that way. One just needs to be in the moment for the work or task being performed. We can all put our phones down for 5 minutes. Trust me, I swear. We can disconnect from the internet for 5 minutes. Also, stop thinking things are going to take all day. This guy spun 5 bowls, 8 plates, flipped a bunch of spoons and did an egg / glass trick in just under 7 minutes. Cleaning a bathroom isn’t going to take half a day. Just go do that thing and be done with it instead of having it hang around your neck for days on end.
What “Agile” Really Means
In the tech world, there is a software development method called Agile. It’s a software development process that even people trained in it still don’t understand it properly. (or just straight up fail at it).
However this video is a great example of it. There is a defined end result here. Spinning 5 bowls and 8 plates. And we are going to do some bonus work in the process (flip some spoons, balance some glasses on our face, etc). Mistakes may happen and we’ll come back around and address them.
The big take away here is, even though all the tasks were identified and worked on, they were not done in a consecutive manner or on a particular timeline.
It’s not always important that things happen one right after the other, in strict order or within a particular timeline. Nor do they need to be focused around one particular goal. But we do have to have a defined, agreed idea of what done looks like. We need to know when we can say we are done and celebrate the accomplishment. But success doesn’t need to be factored down to each individual step. To do so would actually cause more problems than they solve. Because we would not be able to pivot to something else that needs our attention. We are able to shift back and forth to keep everything moving forward and smoothly as time permits, in an “agile” manner.
Observability Is Key
I see this happen a lot. Managers in the tech community come across a management tool that they think is new and innovative. In reality the tool has been used in the regular world for decades.
There is no doubt that to perform the plate trick takes a lot of practice. But no amount of practice can make up with an extensive amount of observability. Constantly checking and ensuring that things are working within parameters, acting on those items once they start to get out of the parameters. The old phrase “keep your head on a swivel”. Meaning, always be watching and observing, be prepared to act when necessary.
Looking up and being aware of what is going on around you is only part of the solution. It is knowing what to act upon and how to act upon that completes the process.
It’s one thing to have a lot of gauges, it another on knowing what they mean and how to properly react to them.
Something I hear said to me from time to time which makes me a little bit sad…
“I wish I could do that!”
Being flexible and move past errors, mistakes are not the end of the world
Why not? Even weirder when I hear it about something that I do. Granted there are a few things that my parents taught me but I can guarantee neither of them taught me a damn thing about computers. lol. Neither taught me about woodworking, vehicle maintenance, boating, diving, etc. None of those things were learned through the same method. None of those came to me through some divine intervention. I simply decided to learn it, then spent time doing it. Asking people who already do it to show me, read books, go to classes…learn.
I have made mistakes in the process, I guarantee I will make mistakes in the future. Nobody is perfect, everyone has a bad day, mistakes will be made.
The biggest lesson in life that I, and every single successful person I have met, read, interacted with in some way has said, we learn more from our mistakes than our successes. There is way more knowledge in what not to do, than what works.
Some might say the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is successful people break stuff. I will go one step further and say successful people aren’t afraid to break stuff and makes mistakes. They throw it in the trash and start over. They don’t feel defeated by it, they feel empowered from it because now they have the knowledge on why not to do something.
It’s not just the plates
All in all, it’s not about the plates. Or the other tasks that are taking place. The result of the video does not “make the world a better place” or “solve world hunger”. If we are lucky, it teaches us something. For starters, we can learn so much from so little. An abstract way to manage our time and our lives. Or, at the very least, things to have to be really complex to be entertaining.
Ultimately, I think the bigger question is, what are we trying to save all that time up for?