So, we are the most distracted society that has ever existed.
In fact, we are distracted every three minutes of the day.
And what's even more interesting than that
is that the University of California, Irvine, states
that it takes us 15 minutes to get back on track.
We swipe, scroll, tap, touch our phones over 3,000 times a day,
and nine is the average windows or apps open at any given time.
Yet we crave more time.
So, we invent systems to keep us on task, on track, on time, in the black.
We use our devices, our wearables, our apps -
any software to make us more productive.
The funny thing is we still complain about being time-starved and time-deprived.
How many of you have caught yourself saying, "I wish I had more time"?
"I wish I could make more time"?
Well, I want to challenge that,
and I want to arm you with some new vocabulary.
So I'd love for you to replace the "I wish I had more time"
with "I want to create capacity."
Capacity is entrenched in our values.
It is the long game.
It is fueled by passion,
it is supported by energy
and results in fulfillment.
And one can't live without the other,
because if you only had passion, you probably wouldn't get very much done.
And if you only had energy, you would be overwhelmed and overcommitted.
And if you only focused on fulfillment, your passions might be a little shallow.
Human behavior is so interesting to observe, isn't it?
Think about yourselves at a bookended day,
backed by meetings after meetings after meetings and commitments.
And how we react is we try to crawl out of this crevice.
We're squeezed for time.
And this climb is exhausting.
But some people will say, "Mel, I am great at multitasking."
How many of you would say you're great at multitasking?
Raise your hand right now.
Fantastic.
Well, I don't have fantastic news for you, actually.
(Laughter)
Multitasking is actually creating some havoc.
This woman here - I asked my eight-year-old,
I said, "What do you see in this picture?"
And she said, "Mom, I see a woman doing the splits, reading a book
and making a movie."
I said, "Okay."
And then she said, "But Mom, she doesn't look very happy.
She should be doing one thing."
I was like, mind-blown!
#MomForTheWin. Right?
This was a fantastic.
And then I said to my husband, I said, "Hon, what do you see in this picture?"
And he said,
"A woman."
So I will not deconstruct that answer right now.
We will save that for later.
But the point is that multitasking and task-switching
is actually making us dumb!
It is decreasing our IQ by 15 points.
It is actually like operating on a sleepless night.
It is like getting an eight-year-old to write the most important email.
And would we do that?
No.
That's not what we want to do.
A lot of people will say,
"You know what, Mel, this is how I operate.
Multitasking, I'm used to doing it.
I can do it.
But I can't get rid of any of these things because they're all obligations."
And I challenge back softly, and I say,
"You have capacity. It's just being eroded somewhere.
And we need to find that erosion."
One of the main culprits for these capacity thieves
is our addiction to notifications.
And our addiction to notifications is killing us slowly.
Research is actually telling us that the addiction to the notification,
the disappointment and the anticipation
is creating an excess of stress hormone and cortisol in our bodies
that our bodies can't break down fast enough.
Therefore, it's depleting our cells and our tissues.
This is not the way we should be operating,
so we need to take note of where we are distracted.
I have a quick story about how I was overcapacitating,
and I was overcommitted and overwhelmed
and addicted to adrenaline
and coffee,
loads of coffee.
And I found myself at my doctor's more often than I would want to admit
because I was experiencing symptoms that I had never experienced before:
acute nosebleeds, skin issues, hair loss, migraines, cellulitis.
And so I went back to the doctor's one last time,
and she looked at me,
and then she looked at her notepad, and she wrote ... something,
handed it to me,
and I read it.
And it said, "This patient is disabled from all duties for one month."
And I wanted to refute it.
And I wanted to contest it.
But I didn't.
I took it back.
The world works in strange ways
because that day on my way home, I received a phone call
that was probably one of the best phone calls I had ever received,
and the message was that I had been the recipient of a 40 Under 40 award.
I was ecstatic, but I was conflicted.
Because the world had just rewarded me for overcapacitating.
So I immediately called the doctor's office back
and negotiated one week instead of one month.
(Laughter)
But I took that week,
and in deep self-reflection,
I really took a deep look at how I was operating
and how I needed to change.
Because I knew
I didn't want to be at the mercy of other people's commitments or requests,
and I didn't want to go home
hoping I would have enough energy to read my kids a book
without wanting to take a nap instead.
And so I did something.
In deep self-reflection, I create.
And I created a structure,
because I knew I wasn't the only one suffering from this.
I knew there was other people that could benefit
for something that I could learn from all of these experiences.
And so after research and observation
and discussion and listening to people and how they were talking about time,
I discovered that there were four states of capacity that we operate in
at any given time.
And it's not based on personality.
It's not based on IQ.
It's not based on your left brain or your right brain.
It's simply the decisions that we make
that make us operate in one of these states of capacity.
There are four.
And it will take you on a bit of a journey,
which could be a typical trajectory
of how someone can actually fluidly flow through
these four states of capacity.
We have indulgent, fatigued, reserved and maximized.
Let's start with indulgent, shall we?
Indulgent state of capacity is where we say yes;
it's where we're addicted to the adrenaline.
It's where we want to validate our talent.
It's where we say yes a lot.
But when we say yes too much, we become overcommitted and overwhelmed,
and when we're not taking care of ourselves,
many of you will know
that this happens.
It's the second state of capacity, which is fatigued and it's burnout.
This is not where we want to be.
Because a reboot is clearly in order.
We need to resign from some of these habits.
We have no capacity to give to anyone or anything.
Burnout, actually,
is something that has just been deemed a medical condition
by the [World] Health Organization just last week.
Very interesting, but very scary at the same time.
So we want to emerge from this; we want to get out of this state.
We want to move to another state,
and this is the third one called the reserved state of capacity.
Now, a couple of different things can happen here
because this is where we have now restored our capacity,
but we're very hesitant to give it away
because we don't want to end up back in fatigued.
It's also a place where we can do restorative activities
to maintain,
to build capacity.
Where we really want to spend most of our time
is in the fourth state, and it's maximized.
This is where we say yes with discernment and no without guilt.
This is where we're connected to our why.
This is where we want to be.
This is where we want to spend most of our time.
As a business professor,
I teach time management, prioritization, decision making,
but as a student, I never learnt about capacity,
and so I teach it.
It's important.
We are so good at booking ourselves back to back to back.
Any space we can find in the calendar, we might book.
My wish is for that the next generation to avoid being diagnosed with burnout,
to be able to stand on their two feet firmly,
centered in their values, discerning in their decisions
and respecting their capacity.
I want you and I to be able to use new language.
I want us to be able to tell each other
"I'm sorry, I don't have the capacity for that right now."
And it's different.
There's a shift.
There's a mutual understanding.
Simply put, capacity is the ability to say yes to something,
wholeheartedly,
but also knowing you have to say no to something else.
[YES. NO]
You said yes to listening to this today,
and I am eternally grateful.
But you also said no to something else that you could have been doing today.
And that's what this is all about.
It's reframing the way we make commitments.
So right now,
I want to give you an experience of what capacity actually feels like.
So you have these rubber bands,
and I want you to put them between your two fingers,
your two index fingers, right now.
Alright.
This is capacity elasticity
because our capacity has elastic.
We can stretch our capacity.
So I'm going to ask you a series of questions,
and you're going to say yes whether you want to or not.
But don't worry, I won't hold you to it.
Okay? Everybody's with me?
Alright. Fantastic. Okay.
Hey, do you think you can join this committee?
We'd love to have you on this committee.
Yes.
Okay, fantastic.
At the first meeting, do you think you can lead it?
You're the best person to do that.
Yes.
And, we need coffee.
Can you pick up the coffee before we get to that meeting?
Great, okay.
We're having a BBQ next weekend.
I'd love you to bring your family.
Come on over. Right?
And, hey, while you're there,
we have some furniture we need to move, and I'd love for you to help us.
Okay, yes.
Your elastic band should be stretched.
Your fingers should be shaking a little bit, okay?
This is how we walk around when we're overcommitted.
This is the feeling.
Your faces are a little contorted right now.
I'm not sure if it's because the band is going to snap -
and I'm not responsible for any injuries.
However, this is how we walk around, and this is how we show up.
So release that band and find the right tension.
Because when we are intentional about our capacity,
there's a comfortable tension.
But there's also a state of being underleveraged
when there's not enough tension.
So pay attention to that.
We make time for groceries!
We make time for errands!
We make time for meetings and quick coffees!
We shouldn't be making time for moments like this.
This is where we should be creating capacity for our loved ones,
for moments that we don't get a do-over for.
This is where we need to preserve and pace.
We measure everything else.
We measure our calories. We measure our weight.
We measure our macros, our micros, our bank accounts.
We measure time.
But how many of us actually really consider measuring our capacity?
It's like when somebody asks you,
"Hey, you want to come over for a party or come to this event?"
and you check your calendar and realize you are booked
back to back.
But in some way, you say,
"You know what? I'm busy, but I'll squeeze you in."
And in some strange way, we intend to flatter the person
by "squeezing them in."
This is what we're going to do?
I really want us to challenge that thinking
because it's not flattery at all.
This is the way we show up when we're overcommitted.
How many of you can relate to this photo whenever you show up to an event
because you have just ran from another event
to literally just to try and make the next one,
and the next one,
and the next one?
No more showing up like this.
[Ego cake]
So what next?
What do we do?
Well,
in time of self-reflection, I created something.
And this came from a conversation with my mom.
And the structure is called "ego cake."
And the name comes from discussion that went like this:
So my mom says to me,
she says, "Mel, your life looks like this decadent dessert table
filled with mouth-watering desserts."
And I was like, "Yeah, it does. Thank you."
And then she says, "You have taken a bite out of every single one of them."
I was like, alright, where's this going? I didn't really expect it to go this way.
I said, "Okay."
And she said, "Which one have you enjoyed the most?"
I didn't have an answer.
I didn't know which one I had enjoyed the most.
I couldn't possibly have enjoyed one of them;
I had taken a bite out of all of them, and I was bloated and full
from all of the opportunities that I had tried to take advantage of.
I was overcommitted.
And so, I went back and created a structure
that helps us deconstruct our commitment patterns,
that helps us observe our indulgent behaviors.
So just like a cake, it has five layers, and it starts from the bottom.
Options in abundance leads to stagnation.
We are sold to 24/7.
"Buy this." "Do this." "Be this."
How do we possibly decide?
Distraction is the death of productivity and creativity.
When we are distracted, we don't do our best work.
And the third layer is resignment.
And it is the juiciest layer of this structure
because this is where we get to say no with discernment.
We need to resign from the things that are no longer serving us.
Because when we do that,
it allows us to be more aware of what's in front of us,
more aware of the opportunities that bring us joy and fulfill our souls.
And once we do that, we have the power to commit,
which is the fifth layer.
Now, I want you to remember this,
and I want you to do this anywhere, any place, any time.
So I'm going to ask you to join me
by raising your left hand, palm facing your chest,
pinkies down, fingers nice and tight.
Alright, perfect.
The pinky finger represents options, obligations and opportunities,
and notice how our pinky is pretty short,
so choose wisely.
The second layer is our ring finger, and it's about distraction.
And usually it's adorned by some sort of jewelry,
and it's like, oh, wow, that's really shiny.
Sorry, I got distracted there for a moment.
Okay?
And then our middle finger is about resignation.
And it is by no coincidence it is our middle finger
to say no to the things that are not serving us anymore.
(Laughter)
And the fourth layer is our pointer,
and it's awareness,
and it's about creating and observing
and being aware of all of the newfound space we've created
from resignment.
And finally, commitment.
Remember that when we are able to say yes to something,
we also have to say no to something else.
Thank you so much,
and I trust that you're respecting your capacity today.
(Applause) (Cheers)
Thank you.