Maxed Out RAM

My week this week started with two fantastic days at the Texas PRIMA conference! I had the opportunity to serve as a breakout session presenter, connect with some incredible HR and Risk Management professionals, exchange ideas, and soak up some really good information.

If you know me, you know that networking is never an afterthought. It's part of the mission. I'm going to meet people, make connections, learn something new, and probably leave with at least three ideas I can't wait to implement. The conference had so many great sessions that I genuinely found myself wishing I had a clone because I didn't want to miss anything!

I was engaged, inspired, energized... And absolutely exhausted!

The funny thing about being energized and exhausted at the same time is that sometimes the excitement does a really good job of disguising the exhaustion.

Wednesday morning, I got back to work, ready to jump back into the swing of things. One of the first things on my calendar was a recording session for a promotional video for our internal leadership academy. That equated to a total of three hours of talking, thinking, smiling, and trying not to look like somebody who had just spent two days running on conference adrenaline.

But we got it done!

After we wrapped everything up, I returned to my desk, opened my computer, and pulled up my never-ending to-do list. And then... Nothing.

I just stared at the screen for a good five minutes or so. Then somewhere around minute five, I realized that for at least the last three minutes, I hadn't actually been thinking about anything. Just staring.

My brain had officially displayed the human equivalent of the little spinning circle on your computer when you have way too many apps open using all your RAM and nothing else can be processed until you close something else.

Now if you have been keeping up with this blog, you might be thinking "uh oh, this is about to lead to a metaphor." And you would be correct!

Think about your smartphone for a minute. You can have several apps running in the background without even realizing it. You're not actively scrolling through them, but they're still consuming resources. Some are checking for updates. Others are tracking your location, syncing information, or sending notifications. And then you wonder why your battery is draining so fast.

Our minds aren't all that different. We carry around an incredible amount of mental activity that doesn't necessarily stop just because we've moved on to something else. You might still be processing that conversation you had yesterday, that decision you need to make next week, that project you haven't finished, or that email you need to respond to, without ever realizing that those things are still running in your background.

And that's just work. Let's not forget the personal stuff. Family responsibilities. Financial decisions. Relationships. Health goals. The grocery list. The thing you forgot to do last Tuesday that suddenly pops into your head at 2:17 in the morning.

All of it competing for a piece of the same limited resource: Your attention.

What makes this especially tricky is that not everything draining your battery is something you dislike. Some of the biggest consumers of our mental energy are the things we're most passionate about.

For me it's leadership, learning, helping others, and building something meaningful through my business.

We don't always recognize those things as demanding because we genuinely enjoy them. But passion doesn't make us immune to fatigue and purpose doesn't give us unlimited processing power.

I think one of the biggest challenges we face, especially as leaders, is the constant competition between priorities. We have things that are urgent. Things that are important. Things that are both. And things that somebody else has decided are urgent, so now they're sitting on our desk!

We spend our days switching between conversations, decisions, problems, projects, and people. And every time we switch, there's a cost. Even when we physically move on to the next task, part of our attention may still be lingering on the last one.

It's like closing a window on your computer but leaving the program running in the background and then later wondering where that music is coming from.

Eventually, everything starts slowing down. And sometimes, we find ourselves staring at a computer screen for three minutes, wondering why we can't figure out which item on the to-do list to tackle first.

What stood out to me the most this week was that I wasn't frozen because I didn't know what needed to be done. I was frozen because I had too many things competing for the attention needed to do any one of them.

One of the things I've been thinking about since Wednesday is how intentional we have to be about managing our mental bandwidth. The apps aren't going to close themselves. There will always be another email, another meeting, another opportunity, another problem to solve, or another good idea worth exploring. But if we're not careful, we'll spend so much time keeping everything running that we never give ourselves enough capacity to be fully present for any of it.

I still have a long to-do list. The conference ideas are still swirling around in my head. The work isn't going anywhere, and neither are the responsibilities. But this week reminded me that being capable of carrying a lot doesn't mean I should carry it all, all the time.

Our brains, just like our devices, have limits, and when we ignore those limits, we don't magically become more productive. We simply become less effective at the things that matter most.

So the next time you find yourself staring at your screen, unable to figure out where to begin, consider the possibility that you don't need more coffee, another productivity app, or a motivational speech. Maybe you just need to close a few things running in the background and give yourself a chance to recharge.

After all, even the most powerful computer needs a little maintenance. And you, my friend, are a whole lot more valuable than a computer.