What is connected to the work that drains you?
In an earlier post, I explored whether you dislike the work itself or the conditions you do it in. Sometimes that distinction gives you enough clarity to act, or sometimes you need to go a little deeper. So we’ll do just that together.
One of the big things to realize about why something at work is draining you is that it’s very rarely that specific thing that’s actually the problem. This goes with projects, people, deadlines, budgets, or really anything. It’s also why a lot of people and teams have a hard time actually addressing anything that’s a problem for everyone.
This is where a little systems thinking helps. At its simplest, it means realizing that whatever you’re addressing is part of a larger system and that system is made of a bunch of different parts, and it’s looking at how the parts of a situation connect and influence one another over time. The Government Office for Science’s introduction to systems thinking offers a useful explanation of that approach.
Think about a project you’re struggling with. Inside it are tasks, milestones, deadlines, goals, and measures of success. Around it are other projects, teams, processes, budgets, and decisions about who gets access to what. So not only is a project a mini-system itself, but it’s also one part of a larger system.
Think about yourself, as another example. You exist within that same workplace system as one part, but you also have relationships, family, friends, interests, and a life beyond it. That’s a broader system you exist in and each of those things are their own systems as well. None of these things operates entirely in isolation.
So when a project feels draining, it’s worth looking at what that project is connected to. The pressure may begin somewhere beyond the work sitting in front of you. (Here’s a hint… it almost always is.)
Could the constraint be somewhere else?
Imagine your difficult project relies on the same people and budget as another project - a set of shared resources. Leadership gives the other project higher priority (for one of many reasons), so it gets first access to those resources. But the expectations for your project stay exactly the same.
You’re still expected to deliver, even though the resources you need keep going somewhere else.
You might start dreading the project. You might feel frustrated with the team you depend on or wonder why you can’t get anything done. You might feel like you’re on an island all on your own, and it feels really unfair that you have to achieve the same results without the same support. Following those connections reveals a specific constraint: the expectations for your project don’t match its access to resources.
That gives you something concrete to discuss. Can the resource allocation change? If it can’t, can the scope, deadline, or expected outcome change?
You may not control those decisions, but understanding the constraint helps you explain why the work is getting stuck and what would need to change. That can even be enough for you to get enough space from it to not hold yourself as close to the results, now that you know why the project is so difficult to work through. You were set up to fail no matter what.
Sometimes the source is several connections away. The team you’re waiting on might itself be waiting on a decision, budget approval, or someone else’s work. It can take some investigation to understand where the pressure begins. This is not an easy skill, to separate yourself from the immediate tensions, and go find where the real constraint actually is.
Where can I start looking?
You don’t need to map the entire company. Start with the part of work that is bothering you and write down what it connects to.
That might include people, projects, goals, leadership, pay, benefits, hours, culture, and both written and unwritten rules. For each connection, ask:
- Does this drain me? If so, why?
- Does it give me energy or support? What makes that possible?
- What else influences what happens here?
This is the kind of exploration I teach in the Eco Mapping module inside Innervates. It helps you look at the relationships around you and notice where support, tension, and strain show up.
