Life Is a Juggling Act

Talk the halls of any company and you'll hear the same lament: "I've got too many balls in the air!" Life in our time-strapped, chaotic world has become a juggling act, both at work and at home. We're all jugglers now, and we all have to learn how to do it better.

"Anyone can learn to juggle," says Michael Moschen, 42, perhaps the world's greatest juggler. "The odd thing about juggling is that it's so damn frustrating when you can't do it and then, when you finally can, you can't understand why you couldn't always do it."

Moschen, a 1990 MacArthur "genius" grant recipient, has performed with the Big Apple Circus, staged a piece for Cirque du Soleil's theatrical circus in Las Vegas, and created "In Motion with Michael Moschen" on "Great Performances" on PBS.

But saying that Michael Moschen juggles is like saying that Pablo Picasso drew. For more than two decades, Moschen has redefined the art of juggling. Moschen's first juggling partner and childhood neighbor, Penn Jillette -- the tall, talking half of the magic duo Penn & Teller -- insists that in 100 years Michael Moschen will be the only juggler anyone remembers.

The key to juggling anything -- from rubber balls to sales calls -- is to do it with grace, says Moschen. "People always put obstacles in the way of their learning," he says. "My job is to help them confront their fear -- of hurting themselves, of failure, or of just looking stupid."

Looking to hone your juggling technique? Want to keep all those balls in the air? Fast Company visited Moschen at his home in Cornwall Bridge, Connecticut to take a lesson from the master.

Master the Basics

Anyone can learn to juggle. It's about breaking down complex patterns and maneuvers into simple tasks. Juggling is a system of tosses and throws, of different patterns that, once broken down, understood, and mastered, can be put together to create something magical. What juggling illustrates -- what we forget -- is that life is magical all the time. As we grow older, we push the magic into dark places and accumulate more and more ways of shutting it off.

In the perfect juggling sequence, the balls move without any apparent human effort. It's all about refining your process, because that's all you have: your commitment to the process of your work. The more you use it, and the more honestly you use it, the better it gets.

Get Comfortable with Failure

One of the first things I do when I'm teaching someone to juggle is deal with their expectations -- in particular, with that awful two-headed monster called success and failure. So many people walk around thinking that they can't do anything and that, even if they could, they wouldn't be good at it. Part of that is the knee-jerk reaction we all have to something we're not comfortable with.

But if you decide to learn to do something, eventually you'll have to confront the fear that you might not be able to -- that you'll lose control and fail. The only way to learn is to recognize, in the little failures, how to avoid the big ones. To learn how to be successful, to learn how to learn, you have to be willing to accept failing 99 times out of 100. And through this familiarity with failure, you'll gain the humility required for any task.

Break the Task Down

I spend my life looking at patterns of chaos and order. Chaos -- whether it's a feeling or a situation -- means we can't perceive a pattern and therefore can't attach a handle to it. To get a handle on something, break it down into a series of steps. In juggling there are three basic ones:

First, make a good throw. Are you rolling the ball off your fingers -- as you should -- or are you using your palm? Do you throw the ball so it always falls away from you -- as it should -- or does it fly over your shoulder because you don't want to let go of it?

Second, trust your throw. Look straight forward. Don't focus on the ball. Realize that once you let go, you have no more control. You're at the mercy of your throw -- and your expectation of the catch you can make.

Third, put your hands under the ball. Let the ball fall into them. If you reach up for it, you cut the amount of time you have to adjust to catching it. So your juggling becomes higher and shorter until, after a few throws, you're all scrunched up. Inevitably, the balls will tumble down.

Juggling comes down to an act of faith. Not faith in any religious sense, but faith in your own physical instincts to know what makes a good or a bad throw. Once you've broken the system down into steps, you can make a judgment of the best way to proceed in that moment. Finish each task and then let go completely -- because the next task is about to fall into your hands.