Recognize your normal capacity and avoid overloading your day to maintain productivity.
Acknowledge the importance of rest and balance to avoid mental burnout and prioritize self-care.
Deep dives
Understanding Surge capacity and its impact on our ability to handle crisis situations
The podcast episode explores the concept of surge capacity, which refers to the reserve of emotional energy we can tap into during a crisis. The host explains how surge capacity became relevant during the pandemic and how people were finding themselves depleted after prolonged stress. However, the focus of the episode shifts to the importance of recognizing our normal capacity and not pushing ourselves too hard. The host reflects on his own tendency to overload his day and emphasizes the need to manage how much we can reasonably take on. Understanding our capacity is crucial for maintaining productivity and avoiding burnout.
Recognizing the dangers of overtraining and pushing ourselves too hard
Drawing parallels from sports training, the podcast highlights the negative consequences of overtraining. Overtraining occurs when someone fails to give themselves adequate time to recover and can lead to fatigue, decreased performance, and an increased risk of injury. The host discusses the similarity between physical and mental burnout and how individuals with ADHD often push themselves mentally without giving proportional rest. The episode urges listeners to acknowledge the importance of rest and avoid the belief that procrastination serves as sufficient downtime. It emphasizes the need to strike a balance and recognize when we are pushing ourselves too hard.
Understanding low capacity days and the importance of self-care
The podcast explores the concept of low-capacity days and emphasizes the need to accept that they will happen. It encourages listeners to prioritize self-care and focus on activities that help recharge their energy. The host suggests engaging in creative activities that are not work-related in order to alleviate mental fatigue. Additionally, the podcast highlights the importance of engagement in social activities and suggests various ways to recharge, including meditation, exercise, reading, and spending time in nature. The episode concludes by urging listeners to embrace both-and thinking, acknowledging that low-capacity days are an opportunity to reset and recover.
One of the ideas that I was presented with during the pandemic was that of surge capacity - this is the idea that we all have reserves of emotional energy that we can call on when we’re in a crisis situation. And this was an important idea for people to grasp as the pandemic wore on because people were finding themselves depleted. Despite having been able to handle everything they eventually came to a wall where they didn’t have any more to give.
This is an important concept, but not specifically what I want to talk about today because what I want to talk about is what I gleaned from this idea. That we because we have surge capacity, we also have a normal capacity. This seems like a fairly obvious point, but also one I think that a lot of us with ADHD often overlook. Despite everything I know about planning it is still far too easy for me to try and squeeze too much into one day. And this isn’t just in terms of how much time I have or how much energy I have, but just how much I can reasonably take on.
In today’s episode, we’re going to be exploring this idea of capacity and how it can impact our ability to get anything done. We be looking at what we can do on these days and how we can actually use them to help ourselves to recover. Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page or Support me on Patreon Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/LowCapacityThis Episode’s Top Tips
We can hit low capacity when we’ve been pushing too hard for too long. Our capacity differs from our energy levels in that we can think of it as the total amount of energy we have for a day. Having a low capacity means that we’re not recovering and that when we do recover we’re only coming back to a low base rate of energy.
When we’re at low capacity we need to slow down and focus on the things we can do - this means prioritizing and thinking about ways we can apply “both-and” thinking where we accept reality and how we can function within it.
A great way to help build back up our capacity is creating some accountability around our self-care tasks so that we actually follow through with those intentions.
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