I have a commitment with myself to publish a new blog post every day. This commitment isn’t excessive but takes a small amount of time to produce the post. What I’d forgotten until recently was how much longer I needed to spend on editing.

In the last month, almost 1 in 3 posts have had errors, mistakes, and confused grammar and ideas when I’ve hit the publish button. By not taking time to edit, I let the quality control slip. It’s easy to understand why I struggle with a tight deadline (albeit self-imposed) and make mistakes. The time pressure to deliver – again self-imposed – restricts my capacity to manage the editing process fully.

I wrote recently about capability being a combination of capacity and ability. In that post, I mentioned I was still working out what sustainable capability is and this is a useful example: My ability to edit is restricted by my capacity to edit. The sustainability part is how to build reminders, quality controls, and performance indicators to remind the user to check whether they’re allowing themselves the space to perform.