July 5, 2024 • 37 mins
We all make promises, both big and small, every day.
But have you ever stopped to think about how these promises are shaping your life, stress levels, and relationships?
Understanding and managing these commitments can dramatically change how you navigate both personal and professional spheres.
In this episode, we dive into the crucial skill of managing commitments. Discover how the promises you make (or break) affect your trust, relationships, success, and self-esteem.
We explore why "time management" is not the answer to getting your schedule under control, thus lowering your stress and overwhelm. and introduce the concept of "capacity management." Learn practical strategies to manage your commitments more effectively, including how to say no or make counteroffers, and the importance of using tools to track your commitments.
Join me as we discuss how managing your promises can lead to a more balanced, productive, and fulfilling life.
- Mark
Let’s connect:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrobertsonpcc
Email: mark@coachmark.com
Website: www.coachmark.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Wake Up and PayAttention, the podcast fueling
(00:03):
positive change from the insideout. I'm Mark Robertson, your
host. With over 25 years as aprofessional coach, I'm thrilled
to explore the personal growthtools that have helped me and
hundreds of people just like youdesign and awaken to their best
life. If you've ever feltoverwhelmed and unfulfilled,
like you're just going throughthe motions day after day, maybe
(00:24):
you're afraid one day all theballs are going to drop, you're
in the right place. Together,let's expand our self awareness
and make sustainable shifts thatimprove our communication
skills, relationships, andoverall well being. This is a
judgment free zone whereopenness, understanding and
support rule. So grab yourheadphones and get ready, it's
(00:46):
time to wake up and payattention.
Greetings, WAPA listeners comingto you from midtown loft studio.
Here on this Thursday, June the27th. I am wanting to get this
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episode in before my surgerynext week having eye surgery
next Monday afternoon. If you'reone of my faithful listeners, it
may be a few weeks after thisone, assuming this one gets
dropped sometime next week.Maybe a few weeks after that
before a new episode comes out,depending on how quickly I can
heal from that. But hopefullythat's pretty fast. But I really
wanted to get this one out toyou. And today I'm going to do
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something similar to what I didlast time, which is kind of
riffing a bit, do have somebullet points jotted down, but
didn't go through the normalprep process that I've been
doing over the last few months.So I'm gonna try it again. I
think it went okay, last time onthe me and the we episode, hope
that one has been helpful toyou, and beneficial to you
gotten some good feedback onthat one. So thanks for sending
(01:53):
that in. And hopefully, we'llget the same on this one. So
let's go. Let's get started.
Where are we headed today?Today, I want to combine a
couple of things in a way I wantto talk about another one of the
speech acts. And then I want totalk about one of the what I
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think pervasive issues we havein our culture. One of the
struggles a lot of people havethat often creates their stress
and their overwhelm in boththeir work and their personal
life that is rooted in thespeech act. And so the speech
act, I'll just tell you, rightup front is a speech act of
making a promise, or what wemight call commitment or an
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agreement. There, those arethree different words that often
mean the same thing. Humanbeings are promised making
machines, you know, in order todo life with others, we have to
make promises. In order to ourfundamentally, in our workplace,
it's fundamentally about makingpromises to take action and
deliver on things for the sakeof a company profit delivering
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to our customers.
So much of our life isintertwined, interconnected
through the promises that wemake with one another. And so
today's topic really is going tobe about promises and what I
like to call capacitymanagement, because I think so
many of us, I believe in ourculture today are really poor at
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capacity management, I'm gonnatalk a little bit about what I
mean by that. And where I thinkit creates, again, a lot of
stress and overwhelm for mostpeople's life. Something that
actually you know, conceptuallyand theoretically would be
fairly easy to change. But itoften is a really hard thing for
us to change. Because there arelike many of the topics we've
talked about. There are someunderlying belief systems and
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cultural notions and culturalideas that I think get in our
way from doing this cleanly andeffectively. And so I'll talk
about some of those today.Probably not all of them, and
we'll probably pick up the restof them in a future episode. So
let's get started.
So let me talk for a minuteabout promises. So when I say
that word, I'm curious what thatconjures for you when you make a
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promise. What does that mean? Ithink for most of us, we hear
that word. It's a big deal. Likemost of us want to keep our
promises in life, I was remindedof the idea of like, My word is
my bond. That expression or aman is as good as his word or a
woman is as good as her word ora human being is as good as
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their word. It's one of thedimensions we talked about in
the trust episode, right? It'skey fundamentally to the
reliability piece. But when wethink about just the idea of
making promises in our life, Iwant you to begin thinking about
how many opportunities do youhave to make promises every day?
Usually those are createdthrough other people asking us
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to commit to make promises to dothings for us, both personally
and professionally. You can eventhink professionally Right? Talk
about it this way is your jobthat you get paid for your job
description is a set of promisesyou made to this company. money
and people this company inexchange for cash. It's really
all it is.
And so promises are embedded inour culture and in our lives. So
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let's talk first a little bitabout why is it important to
have promises? But moreimportantly, like, why is it
important to keep them and whathappens when we break them? What
are the key aspects that areimpacted. So when I learned this
in education for living, andwhen I teach it now, there are
really four primary areas that Ithink are impacted
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fundamentally, by promisesTrust, which I just mentioned a
minute ago. Key aspect ofbuilding trust with others,
relationships, like think aboutall the relationships that have
been damaged through brokenpromises, or half kept promises,
or all the reasons and excusesand noise. We give other people
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when we don't follow through onour promises. It's just crazy
how fundamental they are tosuccessful relationships.
The third one is what we canjust call success. I think, in
order for us to be successful inlife, we have to keep our
promises, perhaps mostimportantly, to ourselves, but
also to others in order to besuccessful. And then it will
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absolutely impact the success ofthe people that we're in
relationship with. And we maytalk about that a little bit
today. But the general idea I'llgive you is that we're
interconnected to those thatmatter in our life through our
promises, following throughmaking fulfilling and managing
our promises really well.
And the fourth dimension is selfesteem. This is an interesting
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one, when we talk about lookingat promises. So the way we talk
about this, the way I teach thisis really looking at the
breaking sides, I go through abig scenario about making a
promise, and then I don'tfulfill on it. So I've broken
it, how that impacts me and theother person. And then I flipped
that talk about the keepingside. So consistently keeping
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your promises, and what happensto those four dimensions. So in
general, I would say, when weconsistently break promises, all
four of those dimensions, trustrelationships, success, self
esteem, they go down, they takea hit to some degree. And when
we consistently keep them andpeople know we keep them, they
go up, it's that simple.
But I was on the fourth one,which is self esteem, which
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interesting when to put inthere. So when I work with
people on boosting their selfesteem or their self confidence,
if you want to call it that,there's always a dimension of
this looking at how well theykeep promises to themselves.
Because what I find is thatoften for people that struggle
with self esteem, the firstperson they're willing to
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abandon a promise to isthemselves. Many, many times
they're in professions, or theyhave friendships or
relationships where they will goabove and beyond, to follow
through on their promises withothers, but they come last, they
will often do that at thesacrificing of the commitments
or promises to themselves. Andthat wears you down it
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decreases. This kills your selfesteem over time. And you'll
wonder why you may feel lessthan a lot. One place to go to
shore that up is to look at,wow, I need to start keeping
promises to myself as much ormore than I keep to others. And
I often will have the saying oflike, the more you manage and
keep your promises to yourselfare strong there. The bigger
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offer you are to other people.
I see professions, I've workedwith professions, many of the
caretaking professions, healthcare, nurses and people that
take care of others counselors,perhaps I don't know. But I
can't think of a lot of examplesright now. But caretaking
professions I find many of thosepeople often struggle with self
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esteem because of this issue.They don't keep their promises
to themselves, while they haveto all day long follow through
on promises to others. So I'lldigress there. But the last
thing I'll say is like, we callit your angle of BS, what does
that mean? It's like when youlook at the angle between what
you say you're going to do whatyou promised to do, and the
actions you actually take, howbig is that angle? I think we
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all know that person that saysthey're gonna do a lot of things
they don't follow through, theyhave a big angle of
inauthenticity, or what we liketo call your angle a BS. So I
invite you to look at that. Iwant that to be small, if not
even non existent.
Okay, so that's the fundamentalidea of promises. So let's build
on at least one dimension that Italked about in this, which I
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think the fundamental place inour culture, both at work and at
home, where we begin to createstress and overwhelm, probably
anxiety, a franticness, ofbusyness in our life. And that's
around this issue of promises. Iactually after having worked
with this for myself in my life,but also worked a lot as an
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executive coach with teams andindividuals. I see that doing
this poorly seems to havetentacles into everyone who does
probably into their day to daylife, it is present at almost
every second of their life whenthey don't do this very well. So
let me explain. Let me startwith this kind of catchy slogan,
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listen to this. Time managementis a myth. There is no such
thing as time management.
So I'm going to tell you rightnow, if you've spent years and
decades trying to get better attime management, give it up to
what do I mean by this, I'mbeing extreme, but the engineer
in me would say this, theliterally you cannot manage
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time. Right? Now how you commitor promise your time where you
put it. That's what I'm sayingyou can manage. But that happens
in a very different way. Okay,time management, you literally
have 24/7 24 hours a day, sevendays a week, that's all you've
got. That's all any of us havegot.
So it's not about quote,managing time, time just keeps
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ticking. It's about managingsomething else. So what is it
then about managing, it's aboutmanaging the promises that you
make within that span of time,it's about not over promising
yourself, given the amount oftime that you have in a day and
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many of us just to cut to thechase. That's what we're, that's
what we're really bad at. Andhow do we get into promises?
Guess what we say yes, to otherpeople's asks, or we say yes to
our own ideas about what we'regoing to do in life. So here we
are, again, back to the power oflanguage, back to the power of
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conversation, the way humans getinto promises or commitments, is
to say yes to things.
So it's not about timemanagement, it's about
commitment management, orpromise management, or what I
like to I'm gonna introduce youto this concept of capacity
management. What do I mean byyour capacity, it's the time and
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energy in which you have todevote to a task that you commit
to, that's your capacity. Soit's really beginning to step
back and look at where are youcommitting your capacity
professionally and personally,and is it in such a way that it
works for you, however, you wantto design your life, if you want
to have a very, very busy alwayson the go life, you've will fill
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that time with all of yourcapacity, and you won't devote
much any capacity to downtime.Personally, for me, I don't like
that when stress and overwhelmshows up for me, I am not my
best self, I don't think well, Idon't act well. I don't like the
emotions and the moods that comewith it. So I work really hard
in my life to actually be surethat I don't overcommit my
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capacity. If I do anything Iprobably under committed, my
friends would say from time totime.
So what are we talking about?Here's the catch phrase that I
heard, that goes along withthat, I just thought I'd add it
because I wrote it down in mybullet points, which is, be
careful because your mouth canoverload your butt in a hurry.
And I think we all have had theexperience, it's one of my time
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out and talk about your internalconversation. When someone makes
an ask of you, we all have aninternal conversation of like, I
really want to do that or notreally sure if I want to do
that. Or, you know, I reallydon't want to do that. But what
happens in life, when you sayyes to all three of those
examples? Especially, 'I'm notsure' and 'I really don't want
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to'. Especially the I reallydon't want to, but you say yes,
anyway, now you got a mess. Nowyou're doing things out of
obligation. And then when youshow up to do it, you're not
going to be peaceful, you'regoing to probably be some level
of resentment, you're not goingto be fully engaged. And so
we're getting down to really thenitty gritty of what happens
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with what we historically havecalled time management. But it's
really capacity management,we're not very good at noticing
our language and conversationsare yeses that get us over
committed beyond our capacity.
Okay. So what's interesting thatas I introduce this concept to
people through the years isalmost, I get this one
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resounding comment when peoplerealize, oh, my gosh, I keep
saying yes to all these thingsat work, because I feel like I
have to the boss is making metoo. It's my job, not seeing
opportunities for where theycould say something other than
Yes, etc, etc. But almostimmediately, the response that I
get is, I've got to learn to sayno, I've got to learn to say no.
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So it's almost this polaritything again, with people the
moment they realize they sayyes, too much they think the
antidote, the thing that tosolve that, I gotta learn to say
no, that could be it. I wouldsay that probably is ample room
for them to say no to somethings, probably more so in
their personal life, things thatthey just really don't want to
do.
But often when you lookunderneath the covers, the
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reason they don't say no isbecause of that old topic we
talked about. They're afraid ofhow they're going to be assessed
by a friend or colleague or theperson and asking them to do
something. That fear of negativeassessment is powerful. So often
people will say yes to thingsthey really want to say no to.
And it creates a cascade ofchallenges and issues. And so
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they're thinking of, I've got tolearn to say no, might be part
of the solution. But there areactually other options at their
disposal. And I typically teachthis in a work setting, but I
think it applies personally aswell. So in a work setting,
teach when someone asks forsomething, and you say, yes,
that's called an acceptance, andnow we're engaged in a promise.
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If you say no, then you haven'tmade a promise. You've declined
their ask.
So let me give you a little onthis. You've declined their
request, culturally, especiallyhere in the south, a lot of
times we have trouble saying no,because we equate it to
rejection. This person mattersto me if I say no to their ask,
I'm rejecting them. And I wouldsay it's not that at all, to not
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end. But that's theinterpretation that traps us
from being able to say somethingother than Yes. So you're not
rejecting someone on a personallevel, when you decline their
ask. It's a decline. So I don'tI want you to change your
thought of it's a rejection, toI'm declining, they're asked
they're asked is separate fromthem as a human being in a way,
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it has nothing to do with theirworth or their character. So if
I decline, I'm not damaging themor rejecting them in any way.
I'm just saying, I declined towhat you're asking. You could
even say thank you for asking, Iappreciate that. It's not just a
direct. No, that doesn't makemuch sense. And you can't really
do that in the workplace,especially if it's your job task
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that you're paid to do. But it'slike some way of with dignity
and respect of saying no totheir ask, there's a massive
freedom in that for humanbeings.
And so what are the otheroptions? Their yeses, their
no's, and then here are theother two that I teach. There's
something called thecounteroffer to basically when
someone asks for something, youcan think about it for a second,
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and then counteroffer. It tellsthem, hey, I can do part of what
you want, or I can do part ofhow you want it, or I can do it
on a different timeframe thanyou're asking for. So when I
teach it, we talk about counteroffering the nuts and the bolts
or the timeframe to it. Soimagine starting to change your
conversations where you want todo part of it, but not all of
it. So counteroffer or your jampacked right now you want to do
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it, but you can't fit it in makea counteroffer. So that's one
option. The other one is what Ilike to call a commit to
respond. And so that'sparticular language commit to
respond to basically that'sbuying yourself time to think
about it, whether you want to doit or don't want to do it, it
can firmly land on your yes orfirmly land on your no. But it's
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called a commit to respond. Orin the workplace.
Oftentimes, when I'm workingwith leaders it's about, they
understand immediately that theask is going to involve more
than them, it's going to involvetheir teams and their people, by
the way, leaders have greatpower to commit the capacity of
the people that work for them.That's one of the big rubs a lot
of times in teams is that levelof awareness needs to be there.
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But oftentimes, that might soundlike listen, I don't know, if
our team can do that, I need tocheck with the key people that
are involved in this. So Icommit to respond. So here it
is, I will get back to you at aspecific time. That's the
commitment, I'll get back toyou. In three hours, I'll get
back to you at five o'clocktoday, at five o'clock tomorrow,
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not language like, as soon as Ican, or just I'll get back to
you. Or when I get a chancethat's too loose for the person
that's doing the asking, theyneed to know when so those are
the other options, right.
And so a little bit more as Ikeep just kind of riffing on
this, capacity management is theterm that I like to think about.
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But you can think of it as thethe akin to what we historically
have said for years is work lifebalance, right? It's the same
thing. And I could go into thatin depth, the whole notion of
ever being balanced between yourwork and your personal life. And
maybe there are moments whereyou get balanced. But I think in
large part, it's really about asyour life unfolds, choosing the
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areas professionally andpersonally, where you want to
commit your capacity, or youwant to commit your time and
energy. And so what I would sayto you kind of reiterate
something I may have saidbefore, I think you get to
design your life the way thatyou want, and you get to design
it in a way that works for you.
So what does that mean? Thatmeans like when you look at your
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work life or your career life,if you work for someone else,
you have to be really mindfulabout when you choose a job you
want to be clear on what is thecapacity that this job will
take? What are the commitmentsthat I'm signing up for, in
exchange for this amount ofmoney. There's an expression in
the world called the goldenhandcuffs that I think about now
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as I'm talking about this, whichis like when leaders move up and
get more and more responsibilitythey usually also get more and
more pay Sometimes,astronomically higher pay. But
also what typically comes withthat is increasing levels of
stress and overwhelm andanxiety, so much so that it
causes. Remember the language,emotion, body connection, it
causes body or biologychallenges, medical breakdowns,
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but they're willing to do ittypically in exchange for the
amount of money that they'remaking. So I call it the golden
handcuffs. And one of the thingsthat I think they miss, are
places within their day to daylife where they do have some
power to design their life wherethey can actually take charge of
where they commit some of theircapacity.
In particular, I talk a lot withemployees of companies that
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don't have the formal authority,they're getting a lot of asks or
demands made from their leaders.And often I'll hear this I have
no choice. I can't say no tothat. And that said, Look,
you're always a choice. And thereality might be Yeah, you can't
say no to that, because part ofyour job description. But what
if you could say again,something other than no? What if
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you learned how to counteroffer?What if you learned to have a
conversation with your bossabout, let's talk about how many
commitments I've gotten this isgoing to push me way over the
edge helped me prioritize thishas helped me figure out a way
to do this. So I'm not goingcrazy, are not stressed and
overwhelmed constantly. So Ithink there still is power,
wherever you are, within anorganization, if you work for
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someone else, to manage yourcapacity more effectively.
There's a concept I often workwith leaders on called their
trap capacity, it's beginning tofree that up, looking at places
where they've been committed tosomething for a long time, and
they just take it for granted.But often, they'll have the
little inner voice of man, Idon't really need to be at this
meeting, or I really don't needto be doing this anymore. That's
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trapped capacity. So let's freethat up. Let's get you
uncommitted from that.
I happen to work for myself. Soobviously, I don't have as many
people pulling on my time, likemost of you may with coworkers
and colleagues. And I have theautonomy to pick and choose what
I want to take and what I don'twant to take. So I'm well aware
that I have an ability to designmy capacity perhaps more easily
(22:05):
than you do. But again, I thinkthere are always opportunities
to notice where we could do thisdifferently. And then personal
life, I think it's sort of allof us, it's really, you have
more freedom there to choosewhere you want to commit your
capacity, in your evenings onyour weekends. Again, being a
sole proprietor working formyself, I have more freedom
there too, because I can commitcapacity to personal things
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during my work day. But I thinkall of us have a, quote,
personal life outside of work,hopefully, and you get to choose
and so again, be clean, clearabout when you get made, asks of
things to do things you reallydon't want to do say no. Just
learn to say no, yes, that is aninstance, where it would behoove
you to again, design yourcapacity, how you're committing
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it differently, so that you getto be peaceful.
Okay, so the last piece I wantto offer you here is one of my
big learnings on. So how do youdo this? Well, because I'm gonna
make a claim to you right nowthat I do this very well, at
least up to this point in mylife, I'm very careful not to
get myself over committed beyondmy capacity. In fact, I think I
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may have alluded to it earlier,some of my friends would say I
probably under committed times,I used to have a bad problem of
over committing, but kind oflearn from that fairly quickly.
So here's what I've discovered,there are two key things you got
to have in place in your life,your own version of these to do
capacity management really well,and to keep your stress and
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overwhelm dialed down.
So the first one is this, youhave to have a system where you
capture your promises all in oneplace. tons of paper lists of
things you've agreed to do. Sowhat am I saying every time you
say yes to somethingimmediately, you got to get it
captured somewhere written downsomewhere. And that can't be in
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many different places. Becauseyou have to have the ability at
any moment during your day tolook at what are the commitments
I've made, how have I committedmy capacity needs to be in one
place. One spot where you canlook and notice, ah, this is the
commitments I've made in life.So I think many of us are really
sloppy about this. We're onphone calls. We're driving
(24:16):
around, we're talking to peoplewearing meetings, and we're
saying yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.And then we don't ever write it
down. We think we're going tomentally be able to remember it.
And most people can't quitecandidly See, every time he said
yes, you got to capture it. Iliterally have gone to the
degree of hanging up a phonecall and then I'll call and
leave myself a voicemailreminder that I made a promise.
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Or I'll make a commitment herein my office and then I'll boom
I'll go right to my system.
So what is my system? Itsoutlook, I use Outlook. Many of
you probably have professionaltools that you use, or personal
tools, maybe outlook, maybesomething else. I use Outlook
calendar, and I use Outlooktasks. So when literally, when I
capture a meeting on my calendarit anything in color on my
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calendar is a commitment of mycapacity. So it usually means
meetings every day orconversations with people or
lunches or something or funstuff in the evening, I use a
calendar. So I can immediatelylook at my calendar for the
whole week, and see how muchopen capacity do I have
whitespace. Right. And so ageneral tip would be, you want
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to leave a fair amount ofwhitespace in your life, to give
you one time for thoseunexpected asks you can't plan
for, but to just downtime foryourself time to just unwind
and, and allow your brain to gowherever it needs to go. So I
use the calendar, and then I usetasks. So calendar captures my
chunks of time that I'vepromised or committed. And tasks
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are the action steps that arepart of the promises that I've
made or promises that I'm tryingto fulfill when I break them
down larger promises. There aretasks I have to do. And I
capture all those tasks. Okay,so I have calendar and tasks is
the system.
And then here's the other part,maybe more important, have to
have it a daily practice. Andusually it's multiple times
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daily, of answering thisquestion, what am I committed to
today? And you have to revisitthat question sometimes dif at
different times of the day,because of unanticipated life
things that happen that shiftand change your commitments. But
I think for me, what worksreally well is it daily morning
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practice, where before I everget busy, get to work, get into
emails, get into meetings, I sitdown, I look at Outlook
calendar, I look at tasks, and Ilook at my tasks typically. So I
look at my calendar, see howmuch space I have. And then I go
to my task and I say, okay,which ones of these can I commit
to inside of that open space,and I make decisions, hard
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choices about of these eightthings on my quote, To Do List,
I've got two hours of opencapacity, I can do these three
things. And I've adapted task,and I'll put a little red
exclamation point, by thosethree things that tells me and
it sorts those through the topthat tells me right now at 7:30,
or 8am, this is what I say I'mcommitted to today, these other
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five things I'll get if I timefreeze up, I'll get to them
today, or more than likely I'mgonna roll them to tomorrow.
Now, here's something to alsonotice, if you keep rolling them
day after day, week, after week,month after month, it tells you
something, what is it? You'renot committed to that? So get it
off your list, take it off,you're not gonna get to it ever.
(27:36):
Right? So your experience istelling you that? So again, it's
a daily practice of answeringthis question clearly. What am I
committed to today, what I foundis that like, by doing that, I
get mental clarity of where I'mheaded on the day, and all that
head noise goes away. All thathead noise disappears. And I can
(27:57):
now focus and get busy on a taskand get going right. And so
that's really what it's about.And as you get better at doing
this on a day to day basis, youcan start to look out over
weeks, you can start to look outover months, maybe even years in
terms of how you're committingyour capacity. So that's how we
do it are there I want to circleback and talk about something
(28:19):
that I said I think doing thispoorly causes it to have
tentacles into other areas ofour life.
What do I mean by that really,fundamentally, what I mean is,
when we're poor at capacitymanagement, we get stressed out
overwhelmed, I think it willrobs us of being in the present
moment constantly. So if youthink about it at work, right,
if you're over committed, you'resitting there at a meeting,
(28:40):
people are talking, you reallyneed to be listening deeply. But
instead you're filtering throughyour to do list or you're
thinking something like man, Iwish they'd get on with this. I
don't have time for this. We tryto rush conversations, we push
things we push people, because Idon't have time to be doing this
thing I committed to because mylist is so long, I gotta get to
the next thing. So it takes usout of the present and gets
(29:02):
pushed into the future. This canalso happen personally, or at an
event that we need to be at butwe're really not even there. Or
we're pushing to get things donequickly. We're stressed or
anxious or driving because wegot way too many things we've
committed our capacity to. We'reovercommitted our mouth has
overloaded our butt. So I hopethat makes sense. And I think as
(29:24):
I've watched that those are thetentacles into almost every
moment. When we're really poorat capacity management, it
affects everything.
Honestly, I even think it's abig part of how we drive here in
the American culture. I thinkmost people are driving crazy.
Taking chances taking risksbecause they're in a hurry,
(29:45):
because they understand I havecommitted to more than I have
time to do. And I'm stressed andI gotta get going. I'll even
make a personal confession. Inoticed that when this is
literally how detailed it gets,when I leave right to the minute
to go somewhere. And I know thatit's going to take 15 minutes
and I leave 15 minutes beforeI'm supposed to be there, it's
(30:07):
not as pleasant a drive, it canoften be stressful for me and
others, when I leave 20 minutesahead, because I give myself
space, I give myself capacity tohave a very different drive and
enjoy the drive.
And so maybe something for youto look at, on a very detailed
level is leaving whitespace inyour day, but also like just
(30:28):
literally, in your driving, makesure you leave some extra time
for the anticipated things thatare almost inevitably going to
happen. If you just book itright to the minute, the odds
are gonna be good, thatsomething's gonna happen and
knock you off, and you're gonnabe late. And effectively, being
late to something means you'vebroken your promise. And give me
(30:49):
all the reasons and excuses youwant in the world. On some
level, if you've broken thatpromise to me, and you're not on
time, especially if you do thatconsistently, then I'm going to
be like, You know what, I don'twant to hear your reasons and
excuses. Actually, I don't wantto hear your excuses. I want you
to keep your commitments. Now,look, I'm a reasonable guy. I'm
open to hearing people'sreasons, because that's life.
(31:10):
But I think we've gotten into,especially in organizational
settings, where there'spervasive over commitment. And
so you see it in habits like allof our meetings start late
people are constantly, at leastfive minutes late. And we build
cultural habits of that whichare fundamentally rooted in
promise management or commitmentmanagement, we'll come right
(31:32):
So anyway, circling back, I knowI've gone on a tangent, but
back to that.
talking about, I just want acertain experience in life, I
want it to be peaceful, smooth,I can act with urgency, let me
be clear, when I get committedto something, I can get stuff
done. And I can act withurgency. But it's urgency, and
it's being present. It's notstressed, overwhelmed, frantic,
(31:52):
and chaotic, very different. Andthat's the way of being I want
to have, as I move through lifeis a way of being that's, that
has some space for things toshow up, that I commit a
reasonable amount of mycapacity, that allows me to get
things done that are importantto me allows me to achieve the
(32:12):
things I've set out to achieveallows me to get my vision, but
I do it in a way that works forme that's responsible.
So I want to circle back to onemore thing, just those two key
aspects. One is remembercapturing your promises all in
one place, and then gettingclear on what you're committed
to every day. And I'll tell youthis, what I do is I am
(32:35):
consistent with that practicefor my work days. And usually
I'll give myself quite a bit offreedom and leeway on the
weekends, I'll have a fairamount of open capacity, with
some exceptions. So I just Igive myself space to just let go
of all that on the weekends, anddo what shows up or do what I
want to do. For me, it's animportant balance. So it's that
(32:57):
it's not seven days a week, allyear long that I'm having to run
this system and keep thispractice. So I hope that makes
All right, we're getting closeto the end of time. So let me
sense.
wrap this up. Okay. I think manyof you have opportunities to
look at capacity management, Ihope the ideas that I've laid
out here make sense to you haveonce again sparked some
(33:20):
thinking, provoke some thinkingon your part, and helped you see
places where you might getbetter at this. And remember,
it's rooted in language, it'srooted in how you have your
conversations, and learning tosay something other than yes to
all of the requests in life. Sowhat's the summary I'm starting
to summarize it right, is thatpromises or commitments or
(33:40):
agreement are core to humanbeings, both doing life
themselves in achieving whatthey want to achieve? It's core
to us doing life with otherpeople, you have to make
commitments. People that won'tmake commitments in life are
really difficult to do lifewith, it's almost impossible,
right? And so pay attention tohow you do promise making your
(34:02):
commitment making. And then wetalked about capacity
management. It's not timemanagement, it's commitment
management or capacitymanagement. So I invite you to
take a hard look at places whereyou might do that better baby
steps, make some tweaks in howyou're doing it, and practice
and find new ways which to getthis quote, under control.
(34:24):
When I'm working with myclients, the first step is to
get their capacity back below100%, which often takes a lot of
work, then we can start talkingabout how to get out in front of
this every day. Okay? So lookhard at where you've chosen to
commit your capacity and all thedifferent areas of your life.
Maybe it's time to move thataround, and maybe look really
(34:45):
hard at do you even have asystem by which you capture all
your promises. And then do youhave a daily practice in which
you get clear on what you'recommitted to. So that would be
the summary I think for today'sepisode.
Finally, your homework. What'syour homework as we begin to
wrap up this episode, I wouldhope that, given everything I've
said today, that at least one ortwo thoughts have popped around,
(35:08):
oh, wow, I don't do this verywell, I need to do that
differently. Follow that thread.So remember your homework is
about creating sustainablechange or learning is time and
practice. So use that idea thatpopped up and get clear and make
a commitment. Here we are, backto capacity management, make a
commitment to your practice onenew behavior over the next say,
(35:34):
two to four, maybe six weeksthat you think will get a better
result for you and createlearning around this whole area
of capacity management. And itwill lower your stress and
overwhelm in life allow you tobe more fully present most
likely, probably strengthen yourrelationships, and fundamentally
(35:54):
bring the more peace. So youchoose what you want your
homework to be, and go for it.
And right now here's Let me wrapthis up. So with this, if you
realize I'm already way overcapacity, the answer to that
could be for you no, Mark, I'mnot committing to anything
practice wise right now, becauseI'm already overcommitted. Let
(36:15):
me get this other stuff undercontrol. So in that regard,
maybe the practice is figuringout what you can let go of
renegotiate or alter yourcommitment to give yourself some
breathing room. All over theplace today, but I hope this
makes sense. Hope it's givingyou some great ideas. I'll close
as I often do, and say best ofluck, WUAPA listeners or
(36:39):
WUAPERS. Be well take great careof yourself. The holidays coming
up next week, July 4, have awonderful holiday with whoever
you decide to spend that with orif you spend it by yourself,
have a wonderful holiday. And bewell until the next episode
drops and we continue thisconversation. Take care.
(37:00):
Well, my friends, that's a wrapfor today. I'm so grateful you
join me and hope you feelenergized by the insights we
took a deeper look at together.If anything resonated with you
or inspired new thinking. dropme a note. I'd love to hear your
biggest takeaway. Please join menext time as we dive deeper into
this never ending journey ofself discovery. Until then, be
(37:22):
well be present, live fully andauthentically. Wake up and pay
attention.
Welcome to Wake Up and PayAttention, the podcast fueling
(00:03):
positive change from the insideout. I'm Mark Robertson, your
host. With over 25 years as aprofessional coach, I'm thrilled
to explore the personal growthtools that have helped me and
hundreds of people just like youdesign and awaken to their best
life. If you've ever feltoverwhelmed and unfulfilled,
like you're just going throughthe motions day after day, maybe
(00:24):
you're afraid one day all theballs are going to drop, you're
in the right place. Together,let's expand our self awareness
and make sustainable shifts thatimprove our communication
skills, relationships, andoverall well being. This is a
judgment free zone whereopenness, understanding and
support rule. So grab yourheadphones and get ready, it's
(00:46):
time to wake up and payattention.
Greetings, WAPA listeners comingto you from midtown loft studio.
Here on this Thursday, June the27th. I am wanting to get this
(01:08):
episode in before my surgerynext week having eye surgery
next Monday afternoon. If you'reone of my faithful listeners, it
may be a few weeks after thisone, assuming this one gets
dropped sometime next week.Maybe a few weeks after that
before a new episode comes out,depending on how quickly I can
heal from that. But hopefullythat's pretty fast. But I really
wanted to get this one out toyou. And today I'm going to do
(01:30):
something similar to what I didlast time, which is kind of
riffing a bit, do have somebullet points jotted down, but
didn't go through the normalprep process that I've been
doing over the last few months.So I'm gonna try it again. I
think it went okay, last time onthe me and the we episode, hope
that one has been helpful toyou, and beneficial to you
gotten some good feedback onthat one. So thanks for sending
(01:53):
that in. And hopefully, we'llget the same on this one. So
let's go. Let's get started.
Where are we headed today?Today, I want to combine a
couple of things in a way I wantto talk about another one of the
speech acts. And then I want totalk about one of the what I
(02:14):
think pervasive issues we havein our culture. One of the
struggles a lot of people havethat often creates their stress
and their overwhelm in boththeir work and their personal
life that is rooted in thespeech act. And so the speech
act, I'll just tell you, rightup front is a speech act of
making a promise, or what wemight call commitment or an
(02:34):
agreement. There, those arethree different words that often
mean the same thing. Humanbeings are promised making
machines, you know, in order todo life with others, we have to
make promises. In order to ourfundamentally, in our workplace,
it's fundamentally about makingpromises to take action and
deliver on things for the sakeof a company profit delivering
(02:55):
to our customers.
So much of our life isintertwined, interconnected
through the promises that wemake with one another. And so
today's topic really is going tobe about promises and what I
like to call capacitymanagement, because I think so
many of us, I believe in ourculture today are really poor at
(03:15):
capacity management, I'm gonnatalk a little bit about what I
mean by that. And where I thinkit creates, again, a lot of
stress and overwhelm for mostpeople's life. Something that
actually you know, conceptuallyand theoretically would be
fairly easy to change. But itoften is a really hard thing for
us to change. Because there arelike many of the topics we've
talked about. There are someunderlying belief systems and
(03:39):
cultural notions and culturalideas that I think get in our
way from doing this cleanly andeffectively. And so I'll talk
about some of those today.Probably not all of them, and
we'll probably pick up the restof them in a future episode. So
let's get started.
So let me talk for a minuteabout promises. So when I say
that word, I'm curious what thatconjures for you when you make a
(04:01):
promise. What does that mean? Ithink for most of us, we hear
that word. It's a big deal. Likemost of us want to keep our
promises in life, I was remindedof the idea of like, My word is
my bond. That expression or aman is as good as his word or a
woman is as good as her word ora human being is as good as
(04:22):
their word. It's one of thedimensions we talked about in
the trust episode, right? It'skey fundamentally to the
reliability piece. But when wethink about just the idea of
making promises in our life, Iwant you to begin thinking about
how many opportunities do youhave to make promises every day?
Usually those are createdthrough other people asking us
(04:45):
to commit to make promises to dothings for us, both personally
and professionally. You can eventhink professionally Right? Talk
about it this way is your jobthat you get paid for your job
description is a set of promisesyou made to this company. money
and people this company inexchange for cash. It's really
all it is.
And so promises are embedded inour culture and in our lives. So
(05:09):
let's talk first a little bitabout why is it important to
have promises? But moreimportantly, like, why is it
important to keep them and whathappens when we break them? What
are the key aspects that areimpacted. So when I learned this
in education for living, andwhen I teach it now, there are
really four primary areas that Ithink are impacted
(05:29):
fundamentally, by promisesTrust, which I just mentioned a
minute ago. Key aspect ofbuilding trust with others,
relationships, like think aboutall the relationships that have
been damaged through brokenpromises, or half kept promises,
or all the reasons and excusesand noise. We give other people
(05:50):
when we don't follow through onour promises. It's just crazy
how fundamental they are tosuccessful relationships.
The third one is what we canjust call success. I think, in
order for us to be successful inlife, we have to keep our
promises, perhaps mostimportantly, to ourselves, but
also to others in order to besuccessful. And then it will
(06:11):
absolutely impact the success ofthe people that we're in
relationship with. And we maytalk about that a little bit
today. But the general idea I'llgive you is that we're
interconnected to those thatmatter in our life through our
promises, following throughmaking fulfilling and managing
our promises really well.
And the fourth dimension is selfesteem. This is an interesting
(06:34):
one, when we talk about lookingat promises. So the way we talk
about this, the way I teach thisis really looking at the
breaking sides, I go through abig scenario about making a
promise, and then I don'tfulfill on it. So I've broken
it, how that impacts me and theother person. And then I flipped
that talk about the keepingside. So consistently keeping
(06:55):
your promises, and what happensto those four dimensions. So in
general, I would say, when weconsistently break promises, all
four of those dimensions, trustrelationships, success, self
esteem, they go down, they takea hit to some degree. And when
we consistently keep them andpeople know we keep them, they
go up, it's that simple.
But I was on the fourth one,which is self esteem, which
(07:17):
interesting when to put inthere. So when I work with
people on boosting their selfesteem or their self confidence,
if you want to call it that,there's always a dimension of
this looking at how well theykeep promises to themselves.
Because what I find is thatoften for people that struggle
with self esteem, the firstperson they're willing to
(07:38):
abandon a promise to isthemselves. Many, many times
they're in professions, or theyhave friendships or
relationships where they will goabove and beyond, to follow
through on their promises withothers, but they come last, they
will often do that at thesacrificing of the commitments
or promises to themselves. Andthat wears you down it
(08:01):
decreases. This kills your selfesteem over time. And you'll
wonder why you may feel lessthan a lot. One place to go to
shore that up is to look at,wow, I need to start keeping
promises to myself as much ormore than I keep to others. And
I often will have the saying oflike, the more you manage and
keep your promises to yourselfare strong there. The bigger
(08:24):
offer you are to other people.
I see professions, I've workedwith professions, many of the
caretaking professions, healthcare, nurses and people that
take care of others counselors,perhaps I don't know. But I
can't think of a lot of examplesright now. But caretaking
professions I find many of thosepeople often struggle with self
(08:44):
esteem because of this issue.They don't keep their promises
to themselves, while they haveto all day long follow through
on promises to others. So I'lldigress there. But the last
thing I'll say is like, we callit your angle of BS, what does
that mean? It's like when youlook at the angle between what
you say you're going to do whatyou promised to do, and the
actions you actually take, howbig is that angle? I think we
(09:08):
all know that person that saysthey're gonna do a lot of things
they don't follow through, theyhave a big angle of
inauthenticity, or what we liketo call your angle a BS. So I
invite you to look at that. Iwant that to be small, if not
even non existent.
Okay, so that's the fundamentalidea of promises. So let's build
on at least one dimension that Italked about in this, which I
(09:28):
think the fundamental place inour culture, both at work and at
home, where we begin to createstress and overwhelm, probably
anxiety, a franticness, ofbusyness in our life. And that's
around this issue of promises. Iactually after having worked
with this for myself in my life,but also worked a lot as an
(09:50):
executive coach with teams andindividuals. I see that doing
this poorly seems to havetentacles into everyone who does
probably into their day to daylife, it is present at almost
every second of their life whenthey don't do this very well. So
let me explain. Let me startwith this kind of catchy slogan,
(10:10):
listen to this. Time managementis a myth. There is no such
thing as time management.
So I'm going to tell you rightnow, if you've spent years and
decades trying to get better attime management, give it up to
what do I mean by this, I'mbeing extreme, but the engineer
in me would say this, theliterally you cannot manage
(10:31):
time. Right? Now how you commitor promise your time where you
put it. That's what I'm sayingyou can manage. But that happens
in a very different way. Okay,time management, you literally
have 24/7 24 hours a day, sevendays a week, that's all you've
got. That's all any of us havegot.
So it's not about quote,managing time, time just keeps
(10:54):
ticking. It's about managingsomething else. So what is it
then about managing, it's aboutmanaging the promises that you
make within that span of time,it's about not over promising
yourself, given the amount oftime that you have in a day and
(11:15):
many of us just to cut to thechase. That's what we're, that's
what we're really bad at. Andhow do we get into promises?
Guess what we say yes, to otherpeople's asks, or we say yes to
our own ideas about what we'regoing to do in life. So here we
are, again, back to the power oflanguage, back to the power of
(11:37):
conversation, the way humans getinto promises or commitments, is
to say yes to things.
So it's not about timemanagement, it's about
commitment management, orpromise management, or what I
like to I'm gonna introduce youto this concept of capacity
management. What do I mean byyour capacity, it's the time and
(11:58):
energy in which you have todevote to a task that you commit
to, that's your capacity. Soit's really beginning to step
back and look at where are youcommitting your capacity
professionally and personally,and is it in such a way that it
works for you, however, you wantto design your life, if you want
to have a very, very busy alwayson the go life, you've will fill
(12:22):
that time with all of yourcapacity, and you won't devote
much any capacity to downtime.Personally, for me, I don't like
that when stress and overwhelmshows up for me, I am not my
best self, I don't think well, Idon't act well. I don't like the
emotions and the moods that comewith it. So I work really hard
in my life to actually be surethat I don't overcommit my
(12:45):
capacity. If I do anything Iprobably under committed, my
friends would say from time totime.
So what are we talking about?Here's the catch phrase that I
heard, that goes along withthat, I just thought I'd add it
because I wrote it down in mybullet points, which is, be
careful because your mouth canoverload your butt in a hurry.
And I think we all have had theexperience, it's one of my time
(13:06):
out and talk about your internalconversation. When someone makes
an ask of you, we all have aninternal conversation of like, I
really want to do that or notreally sure if I want to do
that. Or, you know, I reallydon't want to do that. But what
happens in life, when you sayyes to all three of those
examples? Especially, 'I'm notsure' and 'I really don't want
(13:26):
to'. Especially the I reallydon't want to, but you say yes,
anyway, now you got a mess. Nowyou're doing things out of
obligation. And then when youshow up to do it, you're not
going to be peaceful, you'regoing to probably be some level
of resentment, you're not goingto be fully engaged. And so
we're getting down to really thenitty gritty of what happens
(13:46):
with what we historically havecalled time management. But it's
really capacity management,we're not very good at noticing
our language and conversationsare yeses that get us over
committed beyond our capacity.
Okay. So what's interesting thatas I introduce this concept to
people through the years isalmost, I get this one
(14:06):
resounding comment when peoplerealize, oh, my gosh, I keep
saying yes to all these thingsat work, because I feel like I
have to the boss is making metoo. It's my job, not seeing
opportunities for where theycould say something other than
Yes, etc, etc. But almostimmediately, the response that I
get is, I've got to learn to sayno, I've got to learn to say no.
(14:29):
So it's almost this polaritything again, with people the
moment they realize they sayyes, too much they think the
antidote, the thing that tosolve that, I gotta learn to say
no, that could be it. I wouldsay that probably is ample room
for them to say no to somethings, probably more so in
their personal life, things thatthey just really don't want to
do.
But often when you lookunderneath the covers, the
(14:51):
reason they don't say no isbecause of that old topic we
talked about. They're afraid ofhow they're going to be assessed
by a friend or colleague or theperson and asking them to do
something. That fear of negativeassessment is powerful. So often
people will say yes to thingsthey really want to say no to.
And it creates a cascade ofchallenges and issues. And so
(15:13):
they're thinking of, I've got tolearn to say no, might be part
of the solution. But there areactually other options at their
disposal. And I typically teachthis in a work setting, but I
think it applies personally aswell. So in a work setting,
teach when someone asks forsomething, and you say, yes,
that's called an acceptance, andnow we're engaged in a promise.
(15:34):
If you say no, then you haven'tmade a promise. You've declined
their ask.
So let me give you a little onthis. You've declined their
request, culturally, especiallyhere in the south, a lot of
times we have trouble saying no,because we equate it to
rejection. This person mattersto me if I say no to their ask,
I'm rejecting them. And I wouldsay it's not that at all, to not
(15:57):
end. But that's theinterpretation that traps us
from being able to say somethingother than Yes. So you're not
rejecting someone on a personallevel, when you decline their
ask. It's a decline. So I don'tI want you to change your
thought of it's a rejection, toI'm declining, they're asked
they're asked is separate fromthem as a human being in a way,
(16:20):
it has nothing to do with theirworth or their character. So if
I decline, I'm not damaging themor rejecting them in any way.
I'm just saying, I declined towhat you're asking. You could
even say thank you for asking, Iappreciate that. It's not just a
direct. No, that doesn't makemuch sense. And you can't really
do that in the workplace,especially if it's your job task
(16:41):
that you're paid to do. But it'slike some way of with dignity
and respect of saying no totheir ask, there's a massive
freedom in that for humanbeings.
And so what are the otheroptions? Their yeses, their
no's, and then here are theother two that I teach. There's
something called thecounteroffer to basically when
someone asks for something, youcan think about it for a second,
(17:02):
and then counteroffer. It tellsthem, hey, I can do part of what
you want, or I can do part ofhow you want it, or I can do it
on a different timeframe thanyou're asking for. So when I
teach it, we talk about counteroffering the nuts and the bolts
or the timeframe to it. Soimagine starting to change your
conversations where you want todo part of it, but not all of
it. So counteroffer or your jampacked right now you want to do
(17:24):
it, but you can't fit it in makea counteroffer. So that's one
option. The other one is what Ilike to call a commit to
respond. And so that'sparticular language commit to
respond to basically that'sbuying yourself time to think
about it, whether you want to doit or don't want to do it, it
can firmly land on your yes orfirmly land on your no. But it's
(17:45):
called a commit to respond. Orin the workplace.
Oftentimes, when I'm workingwith leaders it's about, they
understand immediately that theask is going to involve more
than them, it's going to involvetheir teams and their people, by
the way, leaders have greatpower to commit the capacity of
the people that work for them.That's one of the big rubs a lot
of times in teams is that levelof awareness needs to be there.
(18:08):
But oftentimes, that might soundlike listen, I don't know, if
our team can do that, I need tocheck with the key people that
are involved in this. So Icommit to respond. So here it
is, I will get back to you at aspecific time. That's the
commitment, I'll get back toyou. In three hours, I'll get
back to you at five o'clocktoday, at five o'clock tomorrow,
(18:28):
not language like, as soon as Ican, or just I'll get back to
you. Or when I get a chancethat's too loose for the person
that's doing the asking, theyneed to know when so those are
the other options, right.
And so a little bit more as Ikeep just kind of riffing on
this, capacity management is theterm that I like to think about.
(18:49):
But you can think of it as thethe akin to what we historically
have said for years is work lifebalance, right? It's the same
thing. And I could go into thatin depth, the whole notion of
ever being balanced between yourwork and your personal life. And
maybe there are moments whereyou get balanced. But I think in
large part, it's really about asyour life unfolds, choosing the
(19:10):
areas professionally andpersonally, where you want to
commit your capacity, or youwant to commit your time and
energy. And so what I would sayto you kind of reiterate
something I may have saidbefore, I think you get to
design your life the way thatyou want, and you get to design
it in a way that works for you.
So what does that mean? Thatmeans like when you look at your
(19:32):
work life or your career life,if you work for someone else,
you have to be really mindfulabout when you choose a job you
want to be clear on what is thecapacity that this job will
take? What are the commitmentsthat I'm signing up for, in
exchange for this amount ofmoney. There's an expression in
the world called the goldenhandcuffs that I think about now
(19:53):
as I'm talking about this, whichis like when leaders move up and
get more and more responsibilitythey usually also get more and
more pay Sometimes,astronomically higher pay. But
also what typically comes withthat is increasing levels of
stress and overwhelm andanxiety, so much so that it
causes. Remember the language,emotion, body connection, it
causes body or biologychallenges, medical breakdowns,
(20:17):
but they're willing to do ittypically in exchange for the
amount of money that they'remaking. So I call it the golden
handcuffs. And one of the thingsthat I think they miss, are
places within their day to daylife where they do have some
power to design their life wherethey can actually take charge of
where they commit some of theircapacity.
In particular, I talk a lot withemployees of companies that
(20:40):
don't have the formal authority,they're getting a lot of asks or
demands made from their leaders.And often I'll hear this I have
no choice. I can't say no tothat. And that said, Look,
you're always a choice. And thereality might be Yeah, you can't
say no to that, because part ofyour job description. But what
if you could say again,something other than no? What if
(21:00):
you learned how to counteroffer?What if you learned to have a
conversation with your bossabout, let's talk about how many
commitments I've gotten this isgoing to push me way over the
edge helped me prioritize thishas helped me figure out a way
to do this. So I'm not goingcrazy, are not stressed and
overwhelmed constantly. So Ithink there still is power,
wherever you are, within anorganization, if you work for
(21:21):
someone else, to manage yourcapacity more effectively.
There's a concept I often workwith leaders on called their
trap capacity, it's beginning tofree that up, looking at places
where they've been committed tosomething for a long time, and
they just take it for granted.But often, they'll have the
little inner voice of man, Idon't really need to be at this
meeting, or I really don't needto be doing this anymore. That's
(21:41):
trapped capacity. So let's freethat up. Let's get you
uncommitted from that.
I happen to work for myself. Soobviously, I don't have as many
people pulling on my time, likemost of you may with coworkers
and colleagues. And I have theautonomy to pick and choose what
I want to take and what I don'twant to take. So I'm well aware
that I have an ability to designmy capacity perhaps more easily
(22:05):
than you do. But again, I thinkthere are always opportunities
to notice where we could do thisdifferently. And then personal
life, I think it's sort of allof us, it's really, you have
more freedom there to choosewhere you want to commit your
capacity, in your evenings onyour weekends. Again, being a
sole proprietor working formyself, I have more freedom
there too, because I can commitcapacity to personal things
(22:27):
during my work day. But I thinkall of us have a, quote,
personal life outside of work,hopefully, and you get to choose
and so again, be clean, clearabout when you get made, asks of
things to do things you reallydon't want to do say no. Just
learn to say no, yes, that is aninstance, where it would behoove
you to again, design yourcapacity, how you're committing
(22:50):
it differently, so that you getto be peaceful.
Okay, so the last piece I wantto offer you here is one of my
big learnings on. So how do youdo this? Well, because I'm gonna
make a claim to you right nowthat I do this very well, at
least up to this point in mylife, I'm very careful not to
get myself over committed beyondmy capacity. In fact, I think I
(23:11):
may have alluded to it earlier,some of my friends would say I
probably under committed times,I used to have a bad problem of
over committing, but kind oflearn from that fairly quickly.
So here's what I've discovered,there are two key things you got
to have in place in your life,your own version of these to do
capacity management really well,and to keep your stress and
(23:32):
overwhelm dialed down.
So the first one is this, youhave to have a system where you
capture your promises all in oneplace. tons of paper lists of
things you've agreed to do. Sowhat am I saying every time you
say yes to somethingimmediately, you got to get it
captured somewhere written downsomewhere. And that can't be in
(23:54):
many different places. Becauseyou have to have the ability at
any moment during your day tolook at what are the commitments
I've made, how have I committedmy capacity needs to be in one
place. One spot where you canlook and notice, ah, this is the
commitments I've made in life.So I think many of us are really
sloppy about this. We're onphone calls. We're driving
(24:16):
around, we're talking to peoplewearing meetings, and we're
saying yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.And then we don't ever write it
down. We think we're going tomentally be able to remember it.
And most people can't quitecandidly See, every time he said
yes, you got to capture it. Iliterally have gone to the
degree of hanging up a phonecall and then I'll call and
leave myself a voicemailreminder that I made a promise.
(24:38):
Or I'll make a commitment herein my office and then I'll boom
I'll go right to my system.
So what is my system? Itsoutlook, I use Outlook. Many of
you probably have professionaltools that you use, or personal
tools, maybe outlook, maybesomething else. I use Outlook
calendar, and I use Outlooktasks. So when literally, when I
capture a meeting on my calendarit anything in color on my
(25:01):
calendar is a commitment of mycapacity. So it usually means
meetings every day orconversations with people or
lunches or something or funstuff in the evening, I use a
calendar. So I can immediatelylook at my calendar for the
whole week, and see how muchopen capacity do I have
whitespace. Right. And so ageneral tip would be, you want
(25:23):
to leave a fair amount ofwhitespace in your life, to give
you one time for thoseunexpected asks you can't plan
for, but to just downtime foryourself time to just unwind
and, and allow your brain to gowherever it needs to go. So I
use the calendar, and then I usetasks. So calendar captures my
chunks of time that I'vepromised or committed. And tasks
(25:48):
are the action steps that arepart of the promises that I've
made or promises that I'm tryingto fulfill when I break them
down larger promises. There aretasks I have to do. And I
capture all those tasks. Okay,so I have calendar and tasks is
the system.
And then here's the other part,maybe more important, have to
have it a daily practice. Andusually it's multiple times
(26:10):
daily, of answering thisquestion, what am I committed to
today? And you have to revisitthat question sometimes dif at
different times of the day,because of unanticipated life
things that happen that shiftand change your commitments. But
I think for me, what worksreally well is it daily morning
(26:31):
practice, where before I everget busy, get to work, get into
emails, get into meetings, I sitdown, I look at Outlook
calendar, I look at tasks, and Ilook at my tasks typically. So I
look at my calendar, see howmuch space I have. And then I go
to my task and I say, okay,which ones of these can I commit
to inside of that open space,and I make decisions, hard
(26:54):
choices about of these eightthings on my quote, To Do List,
I've got two hours of opencapacity, I can do these three
things. And I've adapted task,and I'll put a little red
exclamation point, by thosethree things that tells me and
it sorts those through the topthat tells me right now at 7:30,
or 8am, this is what I say I'mcommitted to today, these other
(27:16):
five things I'll get if I timefreeze up, I'll get to them
today, or more than likely I'mgonna roll them to tomorrow.
Now, here's something to alsonotice, if you keep rolling them
day after day, week, after week,month after month, it tells you
something, what is it? You'renot committed to that? So get it
off your list, take it off,you're not gonna get to it ever.
(27:36):
Right? So your experience istelling you that? So again, it's
a daily practice of answeringthis question clearly. What am I
committed to today, what I foundis that like, by doing that, I
get mental clarity of where I'mheaded on the day, and all that
head noise goes away. All thathead noise disappears. And I can
(27:57):
now focus and get busy on a taskand get going right. And so
that's really what it's about.And as you get better at doing
this on a day to day basis, youcan start to look out over
weeks, you can start to look outover months, maybe even years in
terms of how you're committingyour capacity. So that's how we
do it are there I want to circleback and talk about something
(28:19):
that I said I think doing thispoorly causes it to have
tentacles into other areas ofour life.
What do I mean by that really,fundamentally, what I mean is,
when we're poor at capacitymanagement, we get stressed out
overwhelmed, I think it willrobs us of being in the present
moment constantly. So if youthink about it at work, right,
if you're over committed, you'resitting there at a meeting,
(28:40):
people are talking, you reallyneed to be listening deeply. But
instead you're filtering throughyour to do list or you're
thinking something like man, Iwish they'd get on with this. I
don't have time for this. We tryto rush conversations, we push
things we push people, because Idon't have time to be doing this
thing I committed to because mylist is so long, I gotta get to
the next thing. So it takes usout of the present and gets
(29:02):
pushed into the future. This canalso happen personally, or at an
event that we need to be at butwe're really not even there. Or
we're pushing to get things donequickly. We're stressed or
anxious or driving because wegot way too many things we've
committed our capacity to. We'reovercommitted our mouth has
overloaded our butt. So I hopethat makes sense. And I think as
(29:24):
I've watched that those are thetentacles into almost every
moment. When we're really poorat capacity management, it
affects everything.
Honestly, I even think it's abig part of how we drive here in
the American culture. I thinkmost people are driving crazy.
Taking chances taking risksbecause they're in a hurry,
(29:45):
because they understand I havecommitted to more than I have
time to do. And I'm stressed andI gotta get going. I'll even
make a personal confession. Inoticed that when this is
literally how detailed it gets,when I leave right to the minute
to go somewhere. And I know thatit's going to take 15 minutes
and I leave 15 minutes beforeI'm supposed to be there, it's
(30:07):
not as pleasant a drive, it canoften be stressful for me and
others, when I leave 20 minutesahead, because I give myself
space, I give myself capacity tohave a very different drive and
enjoy the drive.
And so maybe something for youto look at, on a very detailed
level is leaving whitespace inyour day, but also like just
(30:28):
literally, in your driving, makesure you leave some extra time
for the anticipated things thatare almost inevitably going to
happen. If you just book itright to the minute, the odds
are gonna be good, thatsomething's gonna happen and
knock you off, and you're gonnabe late. And effectively, being
late to something means you'vebroken your promise. And give me
(30:49):
all the reasons and excuses youwant in the world. On some
level, if you've broken thatpromise to me, and you're not on
time, especially if you do thatconsistently, then I'm going to
be like, You know what, I don'twant to hear your reasons and
excuses. Actually, I don't wantto hear your excuses. I want you
to keep your commitments. Now,look, I'm a reasonable guy. I'm
open to hearing people'sreasons, because that's life.
(31:10):
But I think we've gotten into,especially in organizational
settings, where there'spervasive over commitment. And
so you see it in habits like allof our meetings start late
people are constantly, at leastfive minutes late. And we build
cultural habits of that whichare fundamentally rooted in
promise management or commitmentmanagement, we'll come right
(31:32):
So anyway, circling back, I knowI've gone on a tangent, but
back to that.
talking about, I just want acertain experience in life, I
want it to be peaceful, smooth,I can act with urgency, let me
be clear, when I get committedto something, I can get stuff
done. And I can act withurgency. But it's urgency, and
it's being present. It's notstressed, overwhelmed, frantic,
(31:52):
and chaotic, very different. Andthat's the way of being I want
to have, as I move through lifeis a way of being that's, that
has some space for things toshow up, that I commit a
reasonable amount of mycapacity, that allows me to get
things done that are importantto me allows me to achieve the
(32:12):
things I've set out to achieveallows me to get my vision, but
I do it in a way that works forme that's responsible.
So I want to circle back to onemore thing, just those two key
aspects. One is remembercapturing your promises all in
one place, and then gettingclear on what you're committed
to every day. And I'll tell youthis, what I do is I am
(32:35):
consistent with that practicefor my work days. And usually
I'll give myself quite a bit offreedom and leeway on the
weekends, I'll have a fairamount of open capacity, with
some exceptions. So I just Igive myself space to just let go
of all that on the weekends, anddo what shows up or do what I
want to do. For me, it's animportant balance. So it's that
(32:57):
it's not seven days a week, allyear long that I'm having to run
this system and keep thispractice. So I hope that makes
All right, we're getting closeto the end of time. So let me
sense.
wrap this up. Okay. I think manyof you have opportunities to
look at capacity management, Ihope the ideas that I've laid
out here make sense to you haveonce again sparked some
(33:20):
thinking, provoke some thinkingon your part, and helped you see
places where you might getbetter at this. And remember,
it's rooted in language, it'srooted in how you have your
conversations, and learning tosay something other than yes to
all of the requests in life. Sowhat's the summary I'm starting
to summarize it right, is thatpromises or commitments or
(33:40):
agreement are core to humanbeings, both doing life
themselves in achieving whatthey want to achieve? It's core
to us doing life with otherpeople, you have to make
commitments. People that won'tmake commitments in life are
really difficult to do lifewith, it's almost impossible,
right? And so pay attention tohow you do promise making your
(34:02):
commitment making. And then wetalked about capacity
management. It's not timemanagement, it's commitment
management or capacitymanagement. So I invite you to
take a hard look at places whereyou might do that better baby
steps, make some tweaks in howyou're doing it, and practice
and find new ways which to getthis quote, under control.
(34:24):
When I'm working with myclients, the first step is to
get their capacity back below100%, which often takes a lot of
work, then we can start talkingabout how to get out in front of
this every day. Okay? So lookhard at where you've chosen to
commit your capacity and all thedifferent areas of your life.
Maybe it's time to move thataround, and maybe look really
(34:45):
hard at do you even have asystem by which you capture all
your promises. And then do youhave a daily practice in which
you get clear on what you'recommitted to. So that would be
the summary I think for today'sepisode.
Finally, your homework. What'syour homework as we begin to
wrap up this episode, I wouldhope that, given everything I've
said today, that at least one ortwo thoughts have popped around,
(35:08):
oh, wow, I don't do this verywell, I need to do that
differently. Follow that thread.So remember your homework is
about creating sustainablechange or learning is time and
practice. So use that idea thatpopped up and get clear and make
a commitment. Here we are, backto capacity management, make a
commitment to your practice onenew behavior over the next say,
(35:34):
two to four, maybe six weeksthat you think will get a better
result for you and createlearning around this whole area
of capacity management. And itwill lower your stress and
overwhelm in life allow you tobe more fully present most
likely, probably strengthen yourrelationships, and fundamentally
(35:54):
bring the more peace. So youchoose what you want your
homework to be, and go for it.
And right now here's Let me wrapthis up. So with this, if you
realize I'm already way overcapacity, the answer to that
could be for you no, Mark, I'mnot committing to anything
practice wise right now, becauseI'm already overcommitted. Let
(36:15):
me get this other stuff undercontrol. So in that regard,
maybe the practice is figuringout what you can let go of
renegotiate or alter yourcommitment to give yourself some
breathing room. All over theplace today, but I hope this
makes sense. Hope it's givingyou some great ideas. I'll close
as I often do, and say best ofluck, WUAPA listeners or
(36:39):
WUAPERS. Be well take great careof yourself. The holidays coming
up next week, July 4, have awonderful holiday with whoever
you decide to spend that with orif you spend it by yourself,
have a wonderful holiday. And bewell until the next episode
drops and we continue thisconversation. Take care.
(37:00):
Well, my friends, that's a wrapfor today. I'm so grateful you
join me and hope you feelenergized by the insights we
took a deeper look at together.If anything resonated with you
or inspired new thinking. dropme a note. I'd love to hear your
biggest takeaway. Please join menext time as we dive deeper into
this never ending journey ofself discovery. Until then, be
(37:22):
well be present, live fully andauthentically. Wake up and pay
attention.
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