Have you ever felt overwhelmed with your number of projects that you have? A better question is probably, “Do you remember the last time you were not feeling overwhelmed with the number of projects you had?”

I recently finished reading a book called More Balls than Hands by Michael Gelb (who is more known for his book How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci), and the main premise of the book is how to manage multiple projects at the same time by using the analogy to the art of juggling.

If you get a chance, I highly recommend reading the book. There were a lot of good recommendations in it, which include:

• Transform your attitude towards mistakes and failure: There is no way around it - if you want to learn how to juggle multiple balls, you will fail a number of times before you learn it. From an old Japanese saying, “I fall down seven times. I get up eight times.”
• Visualize your body going through the motion of successful juggling: For the mind-body coordination, use your mental vision to go through the process of a successful juggle.
• Proper release of the ball ensures it will land properly: This might be the most important point. Drawing the analogy to a project, if you are going to divert your attention to another project, make sure you leave your current project in a proper state so that you can come back to it at a later time. This step is done repeatedly for all your projects you intermittently work on.
• Use relaxed concentration: If you are tense, then your anxiety will interfere with your timing. This advice is another way of describing zen.
• Don’t be afraid to let a ball drop: There are other balls in the air. Don’t let one ball dropping cause your other balls to drop.

GTD and Juggling
To me, this is where Getting Things Done steps in. As I am applying GTD in my daily activities, I find that I have much more control over my time. I’ve been more proactive than reactive. I understand more about how I spend my time and I can plan how to spend it in the future. GTD has also shown me that my level of commitments is more than the amount of resource (time, energy) that I have. GTD is great, but it does not create 25 hours in a day, or 8 days in a week. However, GTD helps me to be smart about how to spend time.

Specifically, the third point about releasing a ball properly so that it lands properly. Because I have so many projects, there are specific actions that must be done so that the project can be left at a proper state before I leave it. GTD is all about actions and scheduling when to do them.

Previously, my habit was to create a list of action items and try to do as much on the list as I can before the end of the day, and what doesn’t get done gets carried over to the next day. I used to rank the activities based on the priority of the project. No more… I do not let action items stay as action items on a list, but instead I tie them to a specific time based on the juggling principle of ensuring I leave the project at a proper state.

GTD - Glue Things Down?
I sincerely am amazed with what GTD is doing for me. It was not the first productivity system I ever learned about (nor will it be my last). I can’t say that David Allen’s book was incredibly original either, since a lot of his advice is common sense. However, I find that with a lot of other productivity systems out there, there was a disconnect between theory and reality. To me, GTD is becoming the glue for all these other systems I previously learned and to make them practical. It became the glue that bound them to reality.