Capacity. Ability.
Two similar-sounding words.
Used interchangeably in many contexts.
But they’re not the same thing – so it’s helpful to separate them and understand how one fits with the other.
Definitions vary, so here’s one useful way to distinguish between them:
- Ability is what we can do today.
- Capacity is what we have the potential to do.
Simple? Yes. Exactly as it needs to be.
Complex perspectives don’t bring us closer to the truth of things. They push us further further away, miring us in an imagined illusion of our own conjuring.
We can judge the value of an idea by the fruit it bears.
The fewer moving parts something has, the smaller the chance it’ll fall apart when you put it to work.
All that is to say:
Learning to better distinguish between latent ability and potential capacity is useful for many reasons… not least of which is that it gives us a language to contextualise our efforts and plot a course towards ongoing improvement.
Put another way: in any given domain, we all have a certain level of ability. And a (usually different) level of capability.
If we’re capable of more than we’re currently able to deliver, then we’re – by definition – operating below our capacity.
In the right circumstances, capacity and ability are perfectly equal. Through dedicated practice, relentless discarding of the inessential, and our commitment to constant progress, we reach the ceiling of potential.
Here, we’ve perfected our craft and are performing exactly as we’re capable of.
In most scenarios, this doesn’t happen.
For most people, across most contexts, for most of their journey, there’s a gap between what they do & what they could do.
(If there’s a ceiling, they haven’t reached it. In some cases, they’re nowhere near it.)
This is an important distinction. Even if it seems like semantics.
When we lack the vocabulary to illustrate the difference between our current output and what we could do – given time, support, other resources etc. – it’s easy to think that the high water mark we reach today is the limit of our potential.
But when we’re able to delineate between today’s best and tomorrow’s promise, we automatically shift into a more productive headspace.
Not having the ability right now doesn’t mean we can never have it. It just means we need to take specific steps to increase our performance, build our skills, and get closer to our ceiling.
Organisations or individuals who think they’ve hit their limits are doomed to stay there.
Those who recognise they have more to give, more to offer, and more they’re capable of?
They’ll not only exploit their full capacity… they’ll expand it, too.
Because just as beliefs in our limits are self-fulfilling, so too is the mindset we attain when we let go of our preconceived, ill-founded ideas about the edges of our ability.
More awaits.
Better awaits.
It starts by separating capacity from ability – what is from what could be.