Mental Fatigue - capacity vs energy

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Pandemic fatigue is causing deep-seated mental fatigue and draining our energy. Low capacity and low energy are not the same thing. Low capacity refers to how much we can handle for the entire day, while low energy is a temporary state. Our surge capacity, which was our reserve energy, has been depleted due to the prolonged pandemic. Mental fatigue is not just mental, but also physical, emotional, and psychological. It affects our ability to make decisions, take action, process emotions, and care about our goals. Despite feeling like this is our new normal, our energy levels will fluctuate. Accepting and recognizing our low-capacity days is the first step towards dealing with them.

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.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/LowCapacity

This 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.