Ah capacity, that interesting measure about how much time we do or might have in a day. Theoretically it is how long we sleep minus the length of the day, but that means we don't think about overheads and likely miss costs like context switching. So if we suppose we have 16 waking hours, and we spend 8 of those hoirs working, we have less than 8 hours left. And depending on how our day is arranged, only a few of these may be useful hours.

This contrasts with desire, which may be higher or lower depending on energy levels. I love learning, so give me something new amd interesting and my desire skyrockets; but that may not mean I have time to spend/devote to that learning, for instance.

This mismatch can be fuelled by sleep stealing (temporarily) or by re-arranging things, or by adding to the recent backlog. If we steal time from sleep or other activities, we might feel rushed and tired, despite accomplishing things. If we add to the backlog, we might feel like there are a thousand things to do, and be anxious about forward progress. Either situation can lead to short term burnout, where recovering on one side doesn't lead to an improvement on the other.

Why am I talking about this? I've got books and equipment galore to explore and help with things, but I haven't had time to actually action anything. I've been trying to improve my organization and paperwork processing skills, but feel like I've hit a wall and that it is hard to make any progress. What I need is to revisit what is important and helpful, and spend some of my time budget doing that.

For instance, I spend time "catching up" on social media each day. It has a dual purpose of keeping me up to date on professional stuff and unwinding from work a bit. But I don't time bound this activity, and I can easily get distracted and use up way too much time here. And then I don't have time for reading or building, or even just hanging out for a bit from time to time.

So, I'm going to be a bit more deliberate going forward, and allow myself time to have fun, to read, to learn, and even do some social media, depending on my capacity and desire balance. I might even carve out some work time to do professional overhead, instead of putting that all on my own time.