What does “At Capacity” look like for you?

Have you been there? That point where you just can’t take on one more thing?

What about above capacity? It’s not fun is it.

That moment where you realise that even if you work through the night, don’t stop for dinner, you still can’t possibly get it all done in time.

“Somethings gotta give”

And generally, that something is you.

Knowing what your “At Capacity” looks like can be a tricky thing to figure out, and the goal posts may always be changing.  But knowing what happens when you reach your capacity threshold, may help you to know when your close and help you to pull back or outsource so you can keep all those balls in the air.

So what happens when you’ve gone over “Capacity”

Everyone is different, so these may not all apply to you, however here is a list of common things that happen when people go past their ‘capacity’ threshold:

Things start to get missed

Be it emails, work, deadlines. It’s the stuff you just keep not getting to every day, that eventually, it’s a big deal and you suddenly find yourself way behind.

Goodbye Quality

A common sign that things aren’t going well and you’ve taken on too much is when your quality goes out the window. Those typo’s, that email to the wrong person, that document you didn’t actually finish before you sent it to someone? Yep, all because you’re past ‘capacity’. When people start coming back to you and telling you you’ve done something wrong, then you need to re-assess how much you’ve taken on.

Things around you start falling apart

When times get busy in business and we spend all our time in our business, other parts of our lives start to suffer. The washing starts pilling up, the dishes go un-washed, more take away meals because it’s suddenly too late to cook, or because there’s just no food in the house because you haven’t gone food shopping in way too long.

What family time?

When your kids start nagging you and your partner says they have forgotten what you look like? Yep, that’s a big sign that you’re spending way too much time at your computer. Remember, you started this business to spend MORE time with your family, if they aren’t feeling the benefit, then you need to re-assess the workload.

Stress

If you’re feeling stressed about everything you need to do, if you’re snapping at family, or hiding under the sheets because you can’t possibly do it all, then it’s time to look at your work levels. When we feel stressed, it’s our body telling us that we’re not coping. Temporary stress is ok, stress to reach a deadline, stress because your day is running out, but if you are feeling stressed more than anything else, then your workload is out of wack.

Lack of Sleep

If you’re sleep is starting to be affected by the amount of work you have on, because you can’t sleep thinking about work, or because you’re not getting enough sleep because you’re staying up late every night to get through it all, then you’ll start to notice the above, because we can only go for so long without enough sleep and when you’re not getting enough sleep, you’re not on your A-game.

But all is not lost!

So we’ve talked about the signs of being ‘at capacity’ but we haven’t talked about what to do about it. Rest assured, there is a solution.

If your at capacity for just a short time, then you may not need to make any adjustments right now, if you’re coping. You can see the light at the end of the tunnel and you know that this is just temporary.

But if this is the status quo, you need to make some changes, because you can’t keep running yourself into the ground, you’ll eventually hit the floor and it’s a lot harder to get back up again than it is to stop yourself from falling.

So here’s a few suggestions. These may not all work for you and that’s a-ok:

Scale back your workload

If you’re finding that you just can’t do it all, then it’s time to re-assess how much you’re doing. Scale back where you can and get your workload to a manageable state again.

Up your work days

Can’t scale back? Okay, well what about upping your work days? If you have an opportunity to work an extra day, then you might need that one day to stay on top of everything.

Review your processes

Sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves is to review how we do things. simply, if you’re not coping with your workload, look at what’s taking you the most time, what is the most time consuming part of your processes and see how you can change this to make it better. What steps in your process can you condense, what can you make electronic, to help you speed up the way you do things and in turn, make them take you less time.

Outsource

When you outsource to a Virtual Assistant, you are outsourcing to a fellow business owner who has your best interests at heart. You are there client and they want the best for you. Find someone in their zone of genius, give them the tasks you hate doing, or even the ones you don’t mind doing, but just never get to because they’re so far down the to do list.

Once you outsource these tasks, even though it may not change your workload (in the case of outsourcing the jobs you never get to) it will change your mindset. That stress of never getting to that job that needs doing? Gone.

You’ll have support and guidance from a professional.

Ask for help

If you are struggling, ask for help. Be it from family, friends, anyone. Reach out and let people know how you’re feeling and that you’ve taken on too much. The ones who care about you will want to help you and may come up with practical solutions to help you fix the overwhelm.

What would you add to the list?