How much can we truly handle?
Lately, I’ve been mulling over this thought: we often assume that higher positions come with a mountain of additional responsibilities. But what if, regardless of the role - whether you’re the president of a country or a security guard - the number of things you’re truly accountable for isn’t all that different?
Our ability to split attention is limited and, broadly speaking, pretty similar across most people. Sure, individual differences exist, but they’re usually not so dramatic as to significantly increase the number of tasks one person can effectively track or oversee.
Now, the way we perceive and react to the weight of responsibilities - our stress levels and subjective sense of burden - that’s where things get personal. What might feel like a crushing workload to one person could be a manageable checklist for someone else. The emotional and mental toll tasks take on us is shaped more by personal factors than by the job title itself.
Though our experiences of burden differ, the actual number of "variables in the responsibility equation" remains pretty constant. This suggests that everyone - regardless of their job - juggles a similar balancing act between limited resources (like attention, time, and energy) and the many external demands pulling at them.
In practice, we’re all navigating the same equation: a finite amount of focus against an endless list of things vying for it. The role we hold might change the stakes, but perhaps not the essentials.