Something happened at work the other day that got me thinking about our capacity to care.

A project that was my responsibility wasn’t being delivered in a way that exceeded expectations. Heck, it didn’t even meet expectations. Truth be told, it disappointed those who were counting on it. And that is not the Pro-Tech way. It’s not my department’s way. And it’s not my way.

Luckily, the timing was such that we were able to both understand and correct the issue.

I was angry (still am) that it happened. There were many reasons (always are) – but ultimately, as most things do, it comes down throwing all the excuses out the door and taking a good hard look at yourself.

If I cared enough, would this have happened?

If I cared enough…

I thought I did. I love my job. I love this company. I like, trust and admire every single person who works here. The culture of excellence and integrity here is palpable.

I work hard every day. I’m passionate and energetic.

So what was it that allowed for this failure?

Again, I kept coming back to our capacity to care. Are there limits? How do we manage the things we are responsible for so excellence is always delivered?

First of all, our capacity to care can be measured in two ways. The first, the vertical if you will, is our level or degree of caring, which I think is unlimited. I don’t think there’s a cap on how much we can care for or love something. There is no yardstick that can measure the love or care I have for my family. It’s an infinite number, we can always +1, if that makes any sense.

The second, the horizontal if you will, is our capacity of caring, which I think has limits. How many things can you care for? How many things can you give that full degree of caring to? I think this is where we start falling down.

I think this can be understood a bit more when we look at people who devote much of their lives to being great at one single thing. Einstein is a great example. He devoted his life to his one great passion, physics. He changed the world because his degree of caring for theoretical physics was off the charts. But dig a little deeper and you find out he not a good husband. He was not a good father. The width of his caring was limited by the degree of his caring for one thing over everything else.

History is filled with example after example of the same type of individual.

I often wonder if that is one of the key ingredients for greatness – the ability (the weakness?) to let all things in your life take a back seat to your one, great passion.

Is it simply how some people are wired? Is it something we can actually manage?

Most of us, I would guess, are not on the extreme end of things here. Most of us care a lot about many things and care a great deal about select things.

At some point we all tend to overload, and that is when we start dropping the ball.

And this is not an excuse. I think is simply is reality.

Just as you can’t drive your car 100 mph everywhere, you can’t over extend your capacity to care. Both result it crashes.

So what do we do? Well, sometimes we drive our cars at 30 mph, where appropriate. That doesn’t mean we don’t care, it just means we understand there are times when you allow yourself to go fast (express ways) and times when it’s even OK to speed. And there are times, 30 mph is OK.

How does this translate back to us, our commitments, and our capacity to care?

Well, I think it means we need to be careful what we take responsibility for. It means we need to develop an understanding of our capacity limits … maybe it’s three big things and two smaller things – however you want to define them.

Maybe it means while you’re in the 30 mph lane, you ensure someone else is in the 55 lane, and another is speeding like a maniac.

Whatever it means, the important thing is we take these moments, these opportunities that are thrust upon us to reflect, learn and grow.