What is actually taking all your energy?
When I work with someone individually, one of our first conversations is about what they believe their job requires. Do they really have to work every evening? Attend every meeting? Finish everything before closing the laptop? We also talk about your understanding of prioritization, productivity, and general communication skills. Do you have an understanding of how the human brain works and what can I teach you that will help start to generate a bit more space.
See your brain was designed to trick you, essentially. It’s meant to give you shortcuts on how the world works and then we look for things that reinforce those shortcuts or beliefs.
Over time, “this is how I work” can become “this is the only way I can work.” It is worth checking what supports that belief.
One pattern I see is a loop between time and productivity. You work longer, become more tired, and find the work harder to finish. Your response is to add more hours, leaving even less room to recover. Fatigue can reduce attention and concentration, which helps explain why more time does not always mean better work. NIOSH describes these effects. This usually happens during a very intense project or assignment where you suddenly have a tight deadline and you enter “crunchtime.” The problem with crunchtime is that without a stronger secure manager, you end up seeing your crunchtime as the new normal baseline. So you work 10 to 12 hours for 2 to 3 days to hit that tight deadline. Now you’re mentally exhausted but you have to keep that productivity up, because your manager saw you could do it. However, you’re less productive than you used to be. So now in order to reach the same (or greater) levels of productivity you have to work even MORE hours… but then you become even less productive… and round and round we go.
I have had clients step away from a task they expected to spend another three hours on that evening, then finish it in fifteen minutes the next morning. And sure this is an observation of me working with people as their coach and not necessarily something that will work 100% for everyone, but the idea is around how can you test what’s really happening. And it raises a useful question: how much is another exhausted hour actually giving you?
Look at the specific pressure. Are your priorities unclear? Is there more work than anyone could reasonably finish? Are you and your manager working toward different expectations? Are you spending hours on tasks with very little impact?
Your manager matters here, too. Can you discuss tradeoffs openly? Do they respond badly when you raise concerns, or remain so absent that you are left guessing? Testing your assumptions can also reveal that the pressure is real and needs support beyond what you can change alone.
What could you test without fixing everything?
Two thoughts can keep you stuck: “I have to fix everything before I can change anything,” and “Everything will settle down after this project.”
The project ends, then another one begins, and the space you were waiting for never actually arrives. It’s a lie we tell ourselves… “If I can just get through this project, then things will go back to normal”
But they never do… do they?
So what I recommend is trying to see can you test the reality of your environment? Can you find small tiny ways to regain control. Because without this space, we can’t really do anything else.
So here are a couple of ideas… before you try it, write down what you expect will happen. Afterward, compare that prediction with what actually happened.
You know the environment you are in, if you believe an experiment is truly going to put you at risk of losing your job… don’t do it but even this is sometimes an untrue reality for people.
- Finish at a reasonable time for one evening. Pick a day next week, account for genuine deadlines and any on-call responsibilities, and close your laptop at an appropriate stopping time. Spend the evening doing something for yourself. The next morning, notice what happened to the work and how you feel approaching it.
- Make a new request a priorities conversation. Explain what is already on your list and that you cannot take on the new task immediately. Ask what should move if it needs to come first. Notice whether the response matches what you feared.
- Question one meeting. Check whether your contribution is needed or whether an update would serve the same purpose. What happens if you decline the meeting?
- Put a limit on polishing. For a task where you have discretion, try fifteen focused minutes, then assess whether the work meets its purpose and required standard. Would another forty-five minutes meaningfully improve it, or mostly move it closer to your idea of perfect? Sometimes that idea of perfect is nothing more than a waste of your time and attention, never really mattered, and a terrible ROI for you.
The point is to learn which expectations are real, which are negotiable, and which you may have been carrying without checking.
How do you use that space to return to yourself?
When you recover a little time, give some of it to something that matters to you.
That might be a walk, a conversation, a hobby, or one of the small sparks you remembered while reflecting on your life. It can happen outside work, even while your job remains demanding.
Then notice what changes. Do you feel more rested? Does a task feel easier the next morning? Do you have a little more room to think about what you want? The answer gives you information for your next step.
You can keep moving between improving your current work situation and exploring your identity. You do not have to solve your entire career to begin making room for yourself.
