If dropping the proverbial ball is a sport, then I am the MVP. Even as I write this, I am picturing one or more tasks from my to-do list slipping out of my grasp and crashing helplessly to the floor. I often wonder how other women (including the busy ladies of EmpowHER) seem to manage effortlessly to keep all the balls in the air.
The other day while attending a conference, I felt as though the luncheon speaker was talking directly to me. Tiffany Dufu is the founder and CEO of the woman-to-woman peer coaching service called The Cru and a leader who sits on the board of Girls Who Code. And yet she managed to find the time to write a book titled Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less. Neither her book nor her talk endorsed ball-dropping due to laziness or inefficiency, but she does offer women a new perspective on our incessant drive for perfection.
“For me, now dropping the ball means that I have gotten really clear about what really matters most to me, that I have really let go of these unrealistic expectations of doing it all and I figured out how to meaningfully engage other people in my life,” Tiffany said. “And it makes a world of difference when you have a lot that you’re trying to move forward in the world both personally and professionally.”
Tiffany describes herself as recovering from a disorder that she named HCD, or Home Control Disease. She talked about how everything in her household had to be done in a particular way — her way. Her proficiency and knack for organization helped her keep all the balls in the air — flawlessly — until her daughter was born.
And with that, “the person who was able to keep a lot of balls in the air started dropping balls,” she said.
She explained that the turning point is different for each sufferer of HCD. For some it might be a medical diagnosis. For others it’s having a family member to care for. Some individuals finally get the promotion of their dreams and then face the difficulty of being the boss.
How does one deal with this sudden, inexplicable onset of chronic ball dropping? Tiffany offered three insights that might help us keep things in perspective when we feel like we are always failing.
She said the first ball she had to drop was an unrealistic expectation about who she was supposed to be. Whether we are a mother, sister, daughter, girlfriend or wife, we always want to be good at whatever role we are given. It’s almost like we have devised a job description for what it means to be a good anything, Tiffany said. She joked that in the good mom job description, “there is a line literally that says you must be physically present when your child takes their first steps.” She advises changing the job description by systematically figuring out what really matters most to us as individuals as opposed to what matters to others.
The second ball she had to learn how to drop was an unrealistic expectation about what she was supposed to do. She talked about leading a time management activity in which participants were asked to write down everything they expect to do in an entire day and assign an amount of time to complete each task. At the end of it, many people came up with a total that amounted to more than 24 hours for a single day. “And it hit me that it’s no wonder all of us feel overwhelmed because what we actually expect that we’re supposed to do or complete in an ideal day is not humanly possible,” she said.
The third ball she had to drop was her personal fear of asking for help. As she put it, “I think it was just a fear of being vulnerable and not wanting people to know how challenging it was sometimes, and wanting to appear that I had it all together.” She emphasized that challenges still exist, but it was a reminder that we can’t expect to keep those balls of work and life responsibilities in the air indefinitely unless we have a helping hand.
So take heart, ladies. We’re not alone, and there’s hope for us yet. If we’re intentional about which balls we let go of, maybe we’ll find ourselves dropping the ball a lot less often.
Lady Hereford is a program specialist for a charitable foundation. She has been a member of EmpowHER’s Branding Team since inception.
Great advice! Thank you for the encouragement!