Operating at 80-85% of Your Maximum Capacity

Back in the day, I really tried to exercise regularly in order to maintain a healthy body and mind.  During those exercise times, be it running, bicycling, or lifting, I had this approach of operating around 80-85% of my maximum capacity for the majority of the workout with occasional or perhaps even periodic pushes into the 90+ range.  What I didn’t do is go 100% for the majority of the time because I knew that I couldn’t maintain that level and that it was also not healthy. This approach not only works for exercising, but I would suggest it also is an approach that should be used for teaching.

   This advice may sound sound counterintuitive to most teachers as we seem to believe that if we are not going at 100% capacity 100% of the time we would be selling the young people we work with short.  However, I would argue, that this belief is a recipe which will lead to either burn-out or complacency (i.e. I’m doing the best I can). I am guessing this is either hitting home or you have someone in mind as you are reading.  I’ve seen it with people I’ve worked with and have been guilty of putting myself in that same situation despite knowing better. If many of us operate at such a high level all the time we feel like the “water is at chin level” and the first time something out of the ordinary (at work or at home) hits we feel as if the “water level is rising past our mouth or nose.”  Soon, we feel like we are in over our head and that is when the young people in our classroom are negatively impacted. Working at 80-85% capacity not only allows room to ramp up our efforts when these unexpected twists hit, but also works to build our own capacity.

     Just like exercising over time builds endurance, working to use best practices over time builds capacity.  We get better at something the more we push through as long as it is within our zone of proximal development (see also They do not understand shallowness because they do not experience depth).  Therefore, working at 80-85% of your capacity doesn’t mean you always have the same capacity.  We get better at what we do (i.e. raise our capacity as professionals), provided we are not drowning in the process, and become better educators which will lead to positively impacting the young people with whom we teach.  Operating under these conditions provides the means to be more effective in the classroom over time without burning out or feeling as if we just can’t take on one more thing.