You have time to stop at the supermarket on the way home. It’s right there. You need a few things. It will only take twenty minutes.
So you go.
You’ve already worked all day, dealt with a problem at lunch, made two phone calls you’d been putting off, and stopped at the bank. None of it was too much. The supermarket isn’t too much either.
You get what you need, wait in line, carry everything home, put it away, and start making dinner.
Then someone asks you a question.
“What?”
They ask again.
“I heard you.”
They look at you. You hear your own voice.
Nothing you did today was unreasonable. You were capable of doing all of it.
You did all of it.
That doesn’t mean you had room for all of it.
We usually find out we’ve done too much after we’ve done it. Then we look at the last thing—the supermarket, the traffic, the question someone asked—and wonder why something so small bothered us so much.
Try taking something out before you have to.
Skip the supermarket. Leave the phone call until tomorrow. Don’t put something into an empty hour just because it fits.
Then pay attention to what’s different later.
How much you can get done is one measure.
How much you can do and still have something left is another.