Last weekend I went off to another giant political convention. My experience at my first convention last year had such a positive and transformative effect on me that my amazingly supportive wife encouraged me to go to this one.

And, truth be told, I was very excited for the convention, mostly because of the people I was going to be able to see.  I knew from Twitter and Facebook that a lot of my friends from across the province would be there, and I assumed it would be easy to find them and talk to them at the event. I also thought it would be a great opportunity to sell some copies of my books, so I loaded up by suitcases with fiction and off I went to Toronto.

Looking back on the situation, I can see that I set 2 difficult conditions for a successful experience, which is at least 1 condition too many. The reality of a convention is that people are rushing around and are caught up in the pull of various sudden opportunities and activities. You might bump into everyone you’re hoping to see, but it’s unlikely to happen by sheer happenstance.  Another reality of conventioneering is that you are too busy and tired to want to carry more stuff around with you. I certainly didn’t want to carry around the satchel full of increasingly heavy books for the whole weekend, so I wasn’t surprised when my chums didn’t want to either.

Tacked on top of my overly ambitious agenda was the sudden appearance of a raging throat infection, making itself known as I arrived in Toronto. My plans had to shift, and I was faced with a choice on how to respond to that. I could

A) get upset, beat myself up for failing to meet my goals, and mope for the whole weekend

B) Do the best that I could to participate in the weekend, while trying to take care of myself, and consider that a victory.

So I dug out my travel kit full of advil, cough syrup, muscle relaxants and away I went. Knowing that I wanted to experience the hospitality suites, if only to say that I had, I ate well, drank an extra coffee later in the day, and soldiered my way through the night. I had a blast.

The rest of the weekend was a sweaty, tired blur, that was punctuated by a countless number of kind gestures from the friends around me. They kept me in good spirits and well hydrated throughout those 2 days, and it made me realize how lucky I am to have these people in my life.

So, when I came home after this illness-infused journey, I took stock of it all. I didn’t meet my original success conditions, true, but in facing a challenging situation and finding a way to continue on despite it, I found a different set of successes to appreciate. And that’s the real lesson I took away from it all: sometimes you have to root around in the big pile of unintended outcomes to find the success, but it’s in there somewhere. Oh, and I have some pretty awesome friends and family.

 

 

You’re in the middle of a long procession of tasks. Behind you are a pile of finished jobs, and in front of you are even more, and you find yourself standing completely still. You want to keep at it and move on to the next job, but your body refuses to comply. No matter how angry you get at yourself,  or how you try to goad or bribe yourself into action, you’re stay still.

It’s like you’re sitting in your car on an icy road. The engine is running, you have a destination, and you want to get there, but when you mash down on the accelerator, your tires spin uselessly. Congratulations, you’ve discovered the limit of your conscious effort!

You see, it takes a mental effort to perform complex cognitive tasks, or to exercise your self-control. And there is only so much energy that you have available for these tasks-when your mental battery runs dry, you lose the ability to push ahead. It’s not a figurative battery-heavy thinking causes your blood sugar levels to drop, and in that state, your self-control and complex problem-solving skills are severely hampered. It’s a psychological concept called “ego depletion”.

Here’s an easy test of the limits of your concentration: start running at a pace that’s faster than you normally run (this requires conscious effort) and as you’re running, try to multiply 657 X 383 in your head. You won’t be able to do both. Most people will slow down immediately, and a few will actually stop running for a moment when they start puzzling out the math question.

This limited capacity for mental effort is why you can find yourself over-committed and overwhelmed with a series of tasks that, on their own, you could easily handle. But when you try to manage them all at the same time, you run out of mental energy. It’s why I didn’t write this post yesterday, for example-too many challenges eating up all of my available processing ability.

So how do you work with this restricted capacity, when you’re always going to be presented with more challenges and opportunities than you can simultaneously handle? Practice. With repetition, even the most complicated tasks can eventually become routine, and routine tasks don’t use up your mental effort.

Remember, you have great potential, but limited capacity-make the most out of it.

 

Someone asked me if I had a list of new things I hoped to try in 2013, and I immediately answered ‘lord no’. I have enough on my plate.I understand where the desire to set out a list of new challenges comes from. You’ve finished another lap around the sun,  and you take a moment to reflect on what you accomplished in that year. Most people look at that year and see a bunch of missed opportunities, and so they resolve to fix that in the upcoming year.

But I had an unusual year. I went on a solo trip to a political convention, despite my firm belief that I had social anxiety and didn’t have the ability to handle the unexpected very well. My very first trip away from home with no one to look out for me. I’m not going to lie to you: it was terrifying. But it was also thrilling, inspirational and amazing. It turns out that I love traveling. Who knew?

And at that convention, I interviewed an astronaut. I sat beside and chatted casually with a guy who has BEEN IN SPACE. In the course of the year, I also talked about climate change with a Nobel Prize winner, met a First Nations Chief, discussed income equality with an economist, and had an hour-long car-ride chat with a doctor and MP. These are just a few of the amazing people who I have been lucky enough to talk and share with over the last 12 months. 2012 taught me that I really like meeting new people and hearing their stories.

And I took the first steps in becoming a leader. I asked for the support and trust of the people in my riding association, and they enthusiastically gave it to me. Together we chose to evolve from an organization focused solely on elections, to one that does some real good for the community all year-round. I’m incredibly proud to have been a part of this transformation, and I’m thankful for everyone who joined in and made a difference.

I should also probably mention that I wrote and published my second novel in 2012. As I wrote this book, I discovered a familiarity with the writing process itself. My writing went from a chaotic pile of guesswork, to something resembling a craft and profession. The prospect of being able to make writing a repeatable process makes me giddy. And I may be biased, but this book is pretty good. You should buy it. (ebook available at itunes, kobo, or here https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/259658 . If you want a physical copy, let me know).

So, by the end of 2012, I had these things on the go:

1. dad to the most awesome 4-year-old in the world
2. husband to the most supportive and wonderful wife in the world
3. a newly published book that needs to be promoted and sold
4. member of  board of directors for my condo complex
5. presidency of my riding association
6. area coordinator for Neighbourhood Watch
7. organizer for the Justin Trudeau Leadership Campaign
8. petitioning provincial government to make a change to Municipal Elections Act

All of these things are fighting for my attention in 2013. Add in the need to regularly exercise to stave off illness/fatness, and the building urge to start writing the next book (already?!?! yup) and I have an overfull plate already. So instead of looking for more stuff to do, I’m going to make 2013 the year of improving the process. Thank you all for following along with my extraordinary year of change and growth. I am almost certain that this year won’t be so profoundly transformational, but I make no promises 🙂

Happy New Year!

Chris