Productive Flourishing

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What's Your Capacity? February 2025 Tips (Productive Flourishing Pulse #487)
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What's Your Capacity? February 2025 Tips (Productive Flourishing Pulse #487)

Assess the capacity you (or your team) really have to move projects forward

Steve Arensberg's avatar
Steve Arensberg
Jan 30, 2025
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Productive Flourishing
Productive Flourishing
What's Your Capacity? February 2025 Tips (Productive Flourishing Pulse #487)
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What? The Pulse AND Monthly Tips? Yes, we’re combining our Monthly Tips into the last Pulse of the previous month. Same useful content, one less email.


In January, we spent a lot of time talking about readiness, and its three components: competency, capacity, and workways. For the month of February, we’ll be taking a deeper dive into the second of those three, capacity.

In the Readiness Assessment and Mini-Guide, Charlie defines capacity as the time, energy, attention, and resources [money, tools, etc.] we can put to work on a project or task.

Personal Capacity

As Charlie talks about in Start Finishing, our personal capacity (when thinking about our best-work projects) is made up of focus blocks:

“Focus blocks fuel your best work. No or too few focus blocks equals no finished best work. It’s really that simple.”

Use the Weekly Block Blueprint to determine how many 90- to 120-minute blocks you have in your schedule. That’ll tell you how much capacity you have to apply to that best-work project.

Weekly Block Blueprint
34.3KB ∙ PDF file
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Download

Team Capacity

For those of you working on or leading a team, team capacity is similar. We’re still talking focus blocks as the currency for completing projects and achieving objectives.

So how many focus blocks does your team have to do project work? Use the Team Focus Block Audit to get a clearer picture.

Team Focus Block Audit
260KB ∙ PDF file
Download
Download

Some likely restrictions to available focus blocks (yours or your team’s):

  1. Routines (admin blocks). Most of us, particularly in teams, will have some sort of routine tasks to do each day, week, month, quarter. Depending on the role, these routines can take up anywhere from 10% to 50% of scheduled work time. Want to recover some of that time to apply to project work? A routines audit is a useful practice.

  2. Meetings (social blocks). Meetings also have a tendency to eat available focus blocks. Team Habits has a whole chapter on meetings, because often understanding your “meeting math” and getting your meetings under control is a great way to free up time that can become focus blocks (project rocket fuel!)

  3. Old tasks, projects, ideas. Your task/project management tool is probably full of these, especially if you haven’t culled them in a while. Reduce the weight of those open loops by invoking the Permission to Release (PTR) protocol.


Subscribe to Productive Flourishing for more guidance and resources on capacity, readiness, team habits, finishing your best work, and more.


More Resources to Assess and Plan Capacity

How to Apply Time Blocking in a Corporate Setting

How to Apply Time Blocking in a Corporate Setting

Steve Arensberg
·
March 6, 2020
Read full story
How Heat Mapping Your Day Can Make You More Productive

How Heat Mapping Your Day Can Make You More Productive

Charlie Gilkey
·
March 21, 2008
Read full story
Work at 85% Capacity with 100% Focus

Work at 85% Capacity with 100% Focus

Charlie Gilkey
·
December 13, 2010
Read full story

Take a Moment

A prompt to pause and reflect.

What’s one area — routines, meetings, old tasks/projects — where you could use subtraction to free up some capacity to put toward your important projects?

We’d love to hear what’s coming up for you.

Leave a comment


Make Work Better Together: Workshops

Does your team have capacity to achieve its objectives? What about competency? Workways?

Our Team Readiness Workshop evaluates and aligns your team’s ability to achieve objectives by assessing all three. This workshop can help your team:

  • Resolve challenges: Navigate transitions, reduce frequent errors, and adapt to restructuring or new challenges.

  • Elevate performance: Prepare for major opportunities, strengthen capabilities for big projects, and build resilience for future challenges.

Explore our different workshops or other ways we can support your team.

Contact Us To Get Started

Not sure where you might want to start? The free Team Habits Quiz is a great way to identify the habits your team is challenged by and where a focused workshop could benefit you.

Take the Team Habits Quiz


In Case You Missed It

Recent posts and other goodness on PF:

The Readiness Assessment and Mini-Guide

The Readiness Assessment and Mini-Guide

Charlie Gilkey
·
Jan 29
Read full story
Liberate Your Team’s Bandwidth by Giving Them Permission to Release Outdated Tasks

Liberate Your Team’s Bandwidth by Giving Them Permission to Release Outdated Tasks

Charlie Gilkey
·
Jan 28
Read full story
Goals Are Homes for Energy, Intentions, and Dreams

Goals Are Homes for Energy, Intentions, and Dreams

Charlie Gilkey
·
Jan 22
Read full story

Join Us in February

Need help assessing your capacity for the remainder of Q1, and to get a head start on Q2? Join us for one or both of our monthly calls (available as part of our paid subscription) to gain clarity and set yourself up for meaningful progress in 2025.

  • Leadership Strategy Session (LSS): Wednesday, February 5, 2025, at 11:00 am PST
    February’s Focus: Using Subtraction to Add to Your Team’s Capacity

    How can you use the power of subtraction — for yourself and your team — to free up capacity and focus on what truly matters? We’ll explore strategies like the Permission to Release (PTR) protocol, a practice that helps clear the noise to add clarity, focus, and energy to the work that drives results.

  • Monthly Momentum Call (MMC): Wednesday, February 19, 2025, at 11:00 am PST
    February’s Focus: Using Subtraction to Add to Your Personal Capacity

    This month, we’ll start with a discussion about the power of giving yourself permission to release what no longer serves you. Let go of what doesn’t matter so you can focus your time and energy on what does.


February’s Momentum Planners

Once you’ve got a better sense of capacity, it’s time to put that information into action. Download the free version of our February planners to help you focus on what matters most and align your capacity to your goals.

Paid subscribers can access the full suite of dated planners below. 👇 If you don't see them, please make sure you’re logged in to your paid account.

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