🚂 June: Capacity

On life fluctuations, fifty-person BBQs, and not enough forks.

If you find today’s topic helpful, consider sharing it with a friend. And if you are said friend reading, then welcome! We’d love to have you stay.

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I’m writing to you from a train.

I don’t get to do it very often, but I love working on trains. I’ll give myself a single task to work on, with zero reactive work or communications. Just deep work, and preferably something fun. Like writing to you.

I love that on a train the background noise of life’s demands goes quiet for a couple of hours.

Which got me thinking about how rarely that’s the case. And how much we like to pretend otherwise.

We treat “do your best” as if it’s a steady 100% we can summon on demand, day in/day out, regardless of what else is going on. But there’s almost always something else tugging at your attention – a houseguest arriving Friday, a toddler who’s decided sleep is for the weak, a family member having surgery, a move, or a friend you’re worried about. None of it shows up on your to-do list, but all of it is running in the background, using the very headspace you need to be a functioning professional.

You’re the same person, but with wildly different day-to-day capacity. And we’re not very good at admitting it.

Most productivity advice assumes a steady-state. Plan your week, block your time, do your weekly review, and off you go. Like a tidy little machine with consistent output.

But work is part of life and no two days in life are ever the same.

We all know this. It’s obvious, you might say. Yet we’re all guilty of sitting down on a heavy day, looking at the same ‘ole ambitious list we’d tackle on a straightforward one, and feeling like a failure when we don’t get through it.

That plan was built for a version of you that may not be accessible that day.

This week for me

This weekend, I’m hosting a BBQ for fifty people. 😅Yes. 5-0. This is new to me. And I do feel slightly sick about it. But mostly excited.

I knew, without a shred of doubt, that Friday was going to be a write-off for any kind of deep work. Because my head would be elsewhere. Half-drafting the food order, mentally rearranging the furniture, wondering if I own enough chairs and forks (I do not).

Once upon a time, I would have white-knuckled my way through that Friday at work. Trying to will my attention onto my workload while I also panicked about how we’re going to park all the cars without pissing the neighbors off. I would have ended the day frustrated on every front.

So this time, I just… took Friday off.

Not as a treat, unfortunately. As a realistic part of planning. I looked at the constraint, accepted it for what it is, and stopped pretending I’d be fully present that day at work. So I might as well be fully present while I panic clean my toilets.

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A few ways to make room

You can’t always take the day off, of course. But you can make small allowances that take the pressure off a lower-capacity day. A few that help me:

Pick the thing that matters. On a distracted day, don’t line up five priorities, only to call four of them failures by dinnertime. Choose the one thing that genuinely needs to happen, do that, and let the rest wait without guilt.

Give the distraction somewhere to live. Whatever’s pulling at you doesn’t get easier by being half-thought-about all day. Time-blocking a deliberate window to deal with it (make the booking, the call, or the plan) stops it nibbling at your mental capacity for other tasks.

Make room for the dip if you can. When there’s a lot going on, take it into account when you plan your day. If you know that you have a school meeting you’re worried about on Thursday, try to schedule your deep work for the morning and less taxing tasks that afternoon before the dreaded meeting.

Tell people what you’re juggling. What’s on your plate can be invisible to everyone else. A colleague chasing a reply may have no idea you’re mid-house-move. A quick “heads up, I’ve got a lot on this week” lets people adjust, and spares you the extra job of managing their expectations.

Outsource what you can. You don’t have to be the one who remembers and sorts everything in the age of AI. What’s on your plate that makes sense to automate? Can you put in a little work now to build workflows that will help future you when things get busy?

Meeting yourself where you actually are does not mean you’re lowering your standards. In fact, I’d argue that it’s the only way to realistically meet high standards.

Some weeks your best is full, organized, and productive. Other weeks it’s getting the most impactful stuff done while life does its thing around you.

Both count. They’re both your best. 😌

“The more you confront the facts of finitude instead – and work with them, rather than against them – the more productive, meaningful, and joyful life becomes.”

Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks

Todoist Tip 💡

Remember that “outsource what you can” up there?

We’ve just launched an official Claude connector for Todoist. 🥳

I’ve created a Claude skill using the connector. Every morning, before I’ve properly woken up, Claude reads through my email inbox and calendar, pulls out anything that’s actually a task, and drops it straight into Todoist, then slots any time-sensitive events into my calendar while it’s at it.

Processing email has always been my most dreaded task. Now I get Claude to do it, and I just take action on what matters.

So when life is life-ing around your work, that’s one more bit of admin you don’t have to do.

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Quick one before you go 📊

We take quite an interesting stance on AI at Todoist.

We’re not interested in the slop or the subterfuge. But we have found meaningful ways to use it to gain leverage and be more productive as a team.

I’d be delighted to talk about it, but I want to know…

Feel free to chat more about how you feel on this topic in the comments, and I’ll see you there.

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Right, my stop’s coming up. Wish me luck with the chairs.

And remember to factor your life into your expectations of yourself and your work.

See you in July. 👋

Naomi (🚂 real human) and the Todoist team

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