Some years ago I spent a lot of time practicing juggling.
For a limited period I had also a (small) position in the italian jugglers community, by aggregating the first nucleus of italian-speaking online jugglers around the official italian mailing list dedicated to the art of tossing and catching multiple objects in the air.

Now, more than ten years later, the ML is still running but I’m not an active juggler anymore.

However what I’ve learnt in that period is incredibly important to me and I think it still affects the way I approach to the everyday job and relationships.

I’d like to share some of what I’ve learnt by practicing juggling and how it helped me to work with a better state of mind.

1) It’s about method, not magic

When I was a boy I thought that jugglers were kind of magicians, or that they were just very fast and talented in moving their arms and hands to catch balls and clubs at the right time. I never thought about the fact that there is a right way to launch the objects in order to catch them again while they are falling.

Some times ago I made a test with some friends. I took some paper sheets and pencils and I asked them to draw a juggler tossing 4 beanbags.
Then and I started to juggle a ‘fountain pattern’.
The fountain pattern is the basic pattern with 4 balls and it is a two separate hands 2-balls juggling. Then again I asked my friends to draw a simple illustration of me juggling. The sketches I got back were really significant. They all represented first a stylized juggler performing a ‘shower pattern’, which is a little more complicated than the ‘fountain’, then they drew me doing something else, a ‘cascade pattern’, which is a lot more difficult.

That simply means that they couldn’t figure the pattern of the juggle before seeing it done. And neither after I juggled it.

Well, a problem often challenges you the same way. You can’t really figure it before approaching it, neither if you have it described.

Moreover, you cannot think to solve it with some magic dust or improvisation, even if you are a ninja master in handling multiple tasks at once, but just setting and following a precise method.

2) Continuous and progressive learning

Jugging can set you in a really positive state of mind. That’s because you quickly understand that learning is a continuous, never-ending process.

Every new level of skills you achieve is just a base for the next step.

Learning to juggle requires time and effort but it rewards you with small but progressive gratifications.

Even when you achieve the best results according your physical and mental ability (i.e.: juggling a five balls cascade for 10 seconds), you can always start again from (almost) scratch changing the props, and using clubs, or rings, or bouncing balls instead.

Remember, you never come to an end with education.

At least this happens as long as you feel gratified in your day job.

3) Simplify by splitting

The modular nature of juggling patterns seamlessly introduces you to the paradigm of simplifying complex problems by splitting them in single tasks.

Juggling with five props can be achieved just if you learn to flash three props, and you can do it only if you can first juggle three props, and so on.

This is also one of the basics of good design:

Simplify and proceed step by step.

4) Lateral thinking

Juggling is one of those disciplines where you can express your creativity in many ways: by using unexpected objects, using parts of your body, parts of the stage, and so on.

Fun is obviously a part of the game, but also you get easily addicted to try new ways to juggle, or simply to stand, in order to get an original experience.

5) Transitoriness

With juggling you create beautiful eye-candies.

Someone said that juggling is a kind of aerial sculpture, and I think she was right.

But it is not permanent.

Our efforts are always bound to an end, even the most beautiful pattern we can create lives just for the time we perform it.

With design we have to get used to this feeling as well.

We cannot be bound to our production forever.

Knowing that we must turn the page is one of the most important pylons of our job.

Of course we should enjoy and feel fully involved in the project while we work on it, but then… let’s move on the next chapter.

6) Teamwork

While you may think that juggling is mainly a solo experience, the most fun is when you work in team. The real essence of juggling is passing: new patterns, brand new perspectives, sudden technical challenges and improvements and, most of all, more fun.

Well, with design I’d like to say that is the same, but it isn’t true.
You simply can’t design alone: you need to be in a team.

7) Failure

This is absolutely the most important teaching I got from my juggling experience.

Juggling involves failure. You fail when the ball drops, when you don’t catch the club your partner threw, when people don’t clap their hands.

No matter how clever are you. Failure is always behind the corner.

You have to learn how to manage it.

But most of all, failure is the only way to get success, it’s a part of it.

You can’t do it right if you don’t make mistakes first.