Juggling Elephants

Juggling ElephantsJuggling Elephants: An Easier Way to Get Your Most Important Things Done-Now!
by Jones Loflin and Todd Musig

We seem to be in the midst of a rash of parables this year. Here’s another popular title consisting of a mere 131 pages. This trend might reflect the fact that people simply don’t have the time to read in today’s chaotic business world. If so, this is a must read.

I should probably warn you though that you may not need this particular parable. If you are already in complete control of your life, if you’re maintaining total “balance” in your life, if you have plenty of time, few priorities, and very little stress―don’t bother with this particular yarn. However, if you’re like the rest of us, you can definitely benefit from the simple but profound story about one man struggling to balance his many responsibilities without cracking under the pressure.

I feel obligated to offer another warning. Check your ego at the reading-room door. If you take yourself too seriously, you might have trouble getting past the large print, circus illustrations and a dialogue style that sounds as though it’s directed to a middle school student rather than a business executive. Oddly enough, this style actually drives home the point that effective solutions to age-old challenges can actually be extremely simplistic in nature.

Using the extended metaphor of the three-ring circus, this short volume passes along several circus maxims that easily translate to balancing professional and personal relationships as well as one’s personal pursuits.

The story begins as the married daughter of our protagonist burst into her father’s office requesting advice in dealing with a life that seems to be collapsing all around her: in her career, personal relationships, and personal development. Mark, the dad, comes to the rescue by admitting that he once shared the same challenge and discovered his solution during a trip to the circus with his wife and daughter years earlier.

The extended metaphor of a three-ring circus is not only clever but memorable. Mark reveals a chance meeting with an off-duty ringmaster, Victor, from another circus who is on a benchmarking venture in search of new creative ideas. Victor guides him through the steps of becoming the ring master of his life with the three rings being Work, Family, and Self. Mark shares this wisdom with his daughter in an effort equip her with the strategies to deal with her challenges. This wisdom includes:

  • With regard to achieving and then maintaining “balance” in one’s life, the objective should not be to balance everything; rather, to balance only what is most important.
  • Trying to juggle elephants doesn’t help anyone. You can’t do it, the elephants aren’t having any fun, and the audience isn’t enjoying an act going nowhere.
  • The ringmaster cannot be in all three rings at once.
  • The key to the success of the circus is having quality acts in all three rings.
  • There is no shortage of acts for the circus.
  • The relationship between the ringmaster and the performers affects the quality of the circus.
  • Intermission is an essential part of creating a better circus performance.
  • Your circus is only as good as your next performance.

This parable passes along several circus maxims that easily translate to balancing professional and personal relationships and teaches us how to better coordinate the activities happening in each ring.

While the advice is not new by any means, the re-frame is refreshing and memorable. Juggling Elephants is incredibly lighthearted and will be appreciated by anyone feeling overwhelmed by their current circumstances. It will help you better focus your time and energy so you’ll be able to enjoy more of the things that are important to you. Above all, it will teach you how to run your circus instead of letting the circus run you.

(This book review was originally published in 2008 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 17.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

When Faster-Harder-Smarter Is Not Enough

When Faster-Harder-Smarter Is Not EnoughWhen Faster-Harder-Smarter Is Not Enough: Six Steps for Achieving What You Want in a Rapid-Fire World
by Kathryn D. Cramer

Again, we find an author who is focusing on the importance of learning to manage your time and deal with the growing number of stressors in your life. Do you ever feel over-extended and that demands on your attention exceed the amount of time and energy you have to cope with them? Is your in-box overflowing as your unanswered e-mail list continues to grow? We are living in a time of unprecedented stress. In order to accomplish more, we try to do things faster, harder, and smarter, using our intelligence, organizational skills, and determination. However, our responsibilities accumulate faster than we can work!

Now Dr. Kathryn Cramer has come along to wake us up. Faster, harder, and smarter sometimes works in the short term, but for the long haul we need to rethink our whole agenda. Tackling the world’s largest “to do” list is not really a life plan. Using Dr. Cramer’s six steps, we can shape a compelling vision of what we want to achieve, so that everything we do fuels—and is fueled by—this greater purpose. Instead of faster, harder, and smarter, we learn to live richer, deeper, and wiser. Dr. Cramer shows us how to recognize our deepest desires and how to tap into our greatest capabilities. By infusing our lives with meaning, we can let go of frustration and irrelevant tasks, and instead focus on what we need to do to achieve a future that will bring us joy and satisfaction.

A quick glance at her six steps will reveal a game plan that taps the inner strength and creativity needed to achieve long-term fulfillment.

  1. Take Your Blinders Off (How to see What You Don’t See)
  2. Be Outrageously Optimistic (How to See Potential, not Problems)
  3. Make the Future Happen Inside You (How to Walk Your Talk)
  4. Get Others on Board (Build Strong Alliances—Communicate to Motivate)
  5. Stack the Odds in Your Favor (How to Build Momentum)
  6. Celebrate Every Victory, Large and Small (How to Leverage Your Success and Wake Up to What’s Next)

This is good, practical guidance for those ready to make changes. This book won’t supply you with breathless tips for squeezing 25 hours out of each day or provide you with no-nonsense guidelines for achieving what you want no matter what the cost. Instead, this enlightening, life-affirming book discusses the many ways in which you can learn to succeed and grow amidst the worry, stress, and pressure of today’s rapid-fire world, and become energized—instead of overwhelmed—by the pressures and anxieties of life.

(This book review was originally published in 2001 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 9.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Thriving in 24/7

Thriving in 24/7Thriving In 24/7: Six Strategies for Taming the New World of Work
by Sally Helgesen

In this new book, Sally Helgesen warns that too many people are being forced to choose between “having it all” and “having a life.” She has done a remarkable job of illuminating the ways the workplace has infringed upon our lives. She uses the pop-speak phrase 24/7 to symbolize the transformation of our sense of time through technology and the blurring of boundaries between work and home. The author details changes including the shift from an industrial economy to a “knowledge economy”; the technology that has spawned a sleepless business culture; the leaner organizations with longer job descriptions; and the domestic drama of over-scheduled children and over-managed health care and finances.

Far from making life and work easier, new technologies are imposing demands on us that we do not know how to say no to. Borrowing a military acronym, Helgesen also describes the new world of work with an acronym, VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity), named for the factors that have developed with the advent of technological breakthroughs. In addition to the new technologies, other current complexities include increased globalization, increased pressure to work long hours, breakdown of traditional barriers between work and home, and the increased work involved in maintaining personal lives and leisure time.

Helgesen doesn’t simply describe the challenges to our public and private lives. She has determined that there is no “one-size-fits-all answer” so she offers six smart strategies we can adopt in order to improvise individual responses. She urges us to “start at the core, learn to zigzag, create our own work, weave a strong web of inclusion, build a clear brand, and practice the rhythm of renewal.” Her artful balance of observations and suggestions create an insightful and practical guide for pursuing what she calls “elegance and simplicity in all our decisions and taking advantage—or resisting—what technology has wrought.”

(This book review was originally published in 2001 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 9.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Eat That Frog!

Eat That Frog!Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time
by Brian Tracy

It’s been said for many years that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long. It’s also been said, “If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first.” Your “frog” is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to put off. This analogy is just one of many concepts targeted by best-selling author Brian Tracy in his latest book, Eat That Frog.

You probably know him as one of America’s leading authorities on the development of human potential and personal effectiveness. We’ve previously reviewed his best-selling books Maximum Achievement and The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success. You may be a proud owner of his best-selling audiocassette program The Psychology of Achievement.

Now he shares the very best ideas and insights on time management in this very fast read, rich in practical advice in the form of 21 logical, immediately applicable steps. Each chapter provides specific exercises you can use to implement Tracy’s advice immediately to see the results for yourself.

(This book review was originally published in 2001 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 7.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.