Why Juggling Should Be in Your Daily Routine
How to quickly improve productivity while learning something fun at the same time!
You work for 15 minutes, your phone lights up and you think to yourself: “Wow, I’ve done so much, let’s see what that notification was about.” and WHOOPS, you’ve suddenly spent half an hour scrolling through Instagram envying other people’s lives.
I used to do this a lot when studying. But then, during homeschooling, our PE teacher forced us to learn juggling. What started out as a tiresome activity then became a useful part of my day.
The beginning
It only took me two weeks to learn (you just need the basics, no need for fancy tricks in the beginning…). I did this by practising every day after studying. As time went along I began enjoying something I used to avoid in every way possible. I experimented with doing it for a couple of minutes in between tasks for a change of scenery.
The benefits start rolling in
I started noticing that I was able to work longer without getting tired and that the quality of what I was doing went up by a lot. Plus, it was something I could show off to my family and friends 😉. I also started learning some tricks to keep me motivated and make the activity more fun and challenging.
You see, when you look at social media or play a game on your phone in between tasks, the brain starts to relax since you’re not doing anything challenging. I’ve noticed that, after a while, I get tired and the work just gets boring and I go back to social media. The cycle of doom repeats itself until it’s time to watch TV…
When juggling, however, you are forced to concentrate. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a fun activity between tasks, you just get back to your desk in a focussed rather than relaxed state. This way, you got your eyes off the screen, you’ve trained your brain AND had a break from boring old work. That’s a win-win situation in my book!
Additionally, it improved my general motivation and self-esteem, since juggling used to be something I was extremely bad at. It taught me that I could learn anything if I put in the effort. So can you!
It doesn’t have to be juggling
It can be whatever you want it to be. That’s the beauty of these small hobbies, you get to choose what and how hard it is! It can even be bouncing a ping pong ball off a bat 30 times. Just anything that makes you concentrate and is not on a computer screen. It shouldn’t have a steep learning curve either, otherwise you risk losing motivation for it, which is the opposite of what you are trying to achieve here. I’ve put together a small list of ideas:
- Juggling (obviously)
- Bouncing a ping pong ball
- Solving a Rubik’s Cube
- Throwing a couple of hoops
- Juggling a soccer ball (hard)
- The list goes on…
As you can see, all you need to improve your productivity a bit is a couple of minutes a day and three small balls. Just try it out. It doesn’t take up a lot of your day and if it turns out to be useless for you… then so be it. Not everything works for everyone.
