Learn to Catch and Throw Before You Juggle

I went to an uber-liberal Quaker school for the majority of my formative years. Hippies reigned supreme, we didn’t have a football team, and competition was deemed “not in the spirit of Friends.” In my freshman year of Upper School (high school), I learned two things in gym class (before it went independent study, basically enabling my dislike of conventional exercise):

1. How to play badminton
2. How to juggle

Learning to juggle took patience. I had to re-learn how to throw and catch in a specific way before I was ready to add the second ball. Then I had to master that until I was ready for the third. The point is that if I had tried to juggle multiple balls right out of the gate, my progress would have been MUCH slower because I didn’t even know how to juggle ONE ball yet.

So many of the people I speak with are quick to become overwhelmed with being on just a handful of sites. No, this is not another post about not having to do everything. I’ve already talked about that here. Let’s assume, for the sake of this post, that you’ve already decided on a tool (or a small set of tools) that you feel fit your skill set and the goals you have for your business. People can still get overwhelmed by that, to a certain extent because they still feel like they’re missing something important. As a lifelong sufferer of shiny thing syndrome, I know how challenging this can be, but your evolution will occur organically. The first step is learning to use what you have.

Whatever tool you choose, commit to it, Create a plan. Learn the tool’s capabilities. Learn its weaknesses. Give yourself the time to really understand how it can benefit you. You may (or may not) reach a point at which you want to take your success on one platform and expand it to another, or add a new tool that extends the functionality of the first. Learn to juggle that ONE tool flawlessly and when the time comes to add a second tool, you’ll be ready to do it and the learning period will be even shorter.

Do you agree? What was your progression into social media?

Tags: Business, Football, High school, Juggling, Physical education, Religious Society of Friends