Filming a documentary takes a lot of capacity it turns out! My laptop recently told me I was running out, my brain sometimes tells me the same!
I’ve started using the cloud which seems to be an infinite storage space, I can’t see but am assured it's there – well my files are each time I go back to them. It’s interesting though with cloud capacity, if it doesn’t really exist how do we know if it’s full? It’s not like when I open my filing cabinet – definitely full (and now I’m showing my age).
I use this analogy for our brains, we can’t see them and we’re never sure if they’re full, but most of us are overwhelmed and overloaded mentally and it’s coming at a cost.
AI is further helping us have endless capacity but does it all fit in our human brain? Can we keep up? We’re now having more ideas, getting through more work and holding more information than ever before but what about our capacity for this – to hold it, to make sense of it, to not drown in the volume of it all?
In the old days when I had too many tabs open on my computer it just used to freeze on me and shut down – I reckon we’re the same and we’ve got more tabs open these days than ever before.
I was chatting to a friend over a pot of tea recently and we were likening this to pouring tea in an already full cup. I reckon the cup is often like our 24 hour day, and yet there never seems to be enough capacity to put all the things to do (or tea) in. It’s like we all need bigger cups but we can’t upgrade our brain like we can our cloud storage limits.
So we have the capacity in our day (24 hours), we have the capacity in our brain (most of us are at capacity here), we also have the capacity of our energy. I love the analogy often used in the disability community here. We all have so many spoons to give to certain tasks across the day, some tasks take more spoons than others, once you’ve used all your spoons you have no more spoons to give, so choose wisely.
The question I’m holding with all of this is: what do we want to do with our one wild precious life – that’s the real capacity.
I think tea is a great analogy here too - used in the UK for all occasions and my non-negotiable start to every morning. Welcoming a visitor to the house ‘put the kettle on’, sad about something or trying to defuse and uncomfortable situation ‘let’s have a cup of tea’, needing to warm up in winter or bring the family together for an announcement – ‘we’ll have a cup of tea’. These days though it’s less of the best china and teapot, and more plastic cup drunk on the go whilst checking emails.
We’ve lost the art of ritual that’s associated with the ancient practice of where this comes from. Yes it’s for connection and social gathering, but consider the art of tea ceremonies; allowing time for the tea to brew, the beautiful china, the feel of the cup. The act of stopping, slowing down, reflecting and connecting. Not just to each other but to silence, the world around us, the world within us too. I love a quiet cuppa in the garden, looking at nature, spending time resetting my brain, away from screens – it’s often where I have my best ideas or breakthroughs, probably not a coincidence.
Here is the answer to the capacity question – tea breaks or rituals where we pause. Whether we drink tea or not isn’t really the point. It’s the space this pause creates that helps us build capacity. Like back in the day we had smoko breaks (or morning tea if you didn’t smoke!) - tea was never intended to be drunk on the go from a plastic cup. It was an excuse to stop, take a break, pause and that in turn helped us find extra capacity – and my can’t we do with some of that right now.
What do you do to support your capacity?