Building capacity

I've been thinking a lot about capacity lately.

After all, it's February, which is usually my hardest month anyway, and we are almost a year into the pandemic here in the US.

I'm hitting a wall, and I know many others are too.

Capacity to me is different to productivity. Productivity is doing more. Capacity can be about doing the same amount of work, but at a lower cost, without expending as much energy.

It's about cramming the same amount of stuff into a more spacious container.

What does this have to do with DEI? Well, I believe an important aspect of DEI is about looking at needs, and figuring out different ways that different needs can be met.

We can't control how the pandemic has disproportionately impacted folks who already face deep systemic inequities.

But what can we do to mitigate the cost?

One small thing I am trying is an app called Motion. The site doesn't give you much of a view into the app but there are tutorials that do. What I'm most excited about is the scheduling feature. Scheduling takes up a lot of energy and creates a lot of stress for me. I won't go into all of the details about why, or how this app solves so much of it for me.

The point is that in the face of so much that I can't control, this is a small thing that I can do that will actually increase my capacity. And again, that doesn't mean I should take on more. It means that the work that I am already doing can be done less stressfully.

What is one small thing you could do for yourself to build capacity? And what does your team need?