Reader situation
Some weeks, your professional commitments leave you energized. Other weeks, they leave you depleted, even when the hours were similar. It’s hard to see why, and harder to know what to change before agreeing to more.
Central idea
Not all professional activities demand the same kind of effort. Notice recurring patterns and adjust timing, scope or support before agreeing to more.
Practical steps
Use these reflection steps over two or three weeks, then decide what to adjust.
- Record activities. For two weeks, jot down your main professional activities outside your core role, such as Circle discussions, events, mentoring, peer calls and volunteering. After each, note briefly how you felt: energized, neutral or drained. Ask yourself: What did I do, and how did I feel immediately afterwards?
- Notice patterns. At the end of the period, look over your notes. Which activities consistently left you energized? Which consistently drained you? Look beyond the type of activity to its features: time of day, group size, preparation required, whether you were leading or participating. Ask yourself: What do the energizing activities have in common? What about the draining ones?
- Identify avoidable friction. For the draining activities, ask what specifically made them hard. Some friction is avoidable: a meeting scheduled at your lowest-energy time, an event with a long commute, preparation you could share, a role larger than you agreed to. Some is inherent to activities that still matter. Ask yourself: Which parts of this could change? Which are simply part of the work?
- Adjust commitment. Choose one adjustment. You might move an activity to a different time, reduce its scope, ask for help with preparation, switch to a different role or step back from it. Ask yourself: What’s the smallest change that would make the biggest difference? Who would I need to talk to?
- Review. After a few weeks, check whether the adjustment helped, and repeat the review before taking on any significant new commitment. Ask yourself: Has the change made a difference? What have I learned about the kinds of participation that suit me?
Worked example
Fictional example
The people and details are invented to illustrate an approach. It reports no outcomes.
Malia, an engineer, records her activities for two weeks. She notices that small peer conversations leave her energized, while a large monthly webinar she co-hosts leaves her drained for the rest of the day. Looking closer, she sees that the draining part isn’t hosting itself but the two hours of slide preparation the night before. She identifies that as avoidable friction. Her adjustment is to ask her co-host to share preparation and to prepare earlier in the week. After the next webinar, she feels noticeably less depleted. She decides to keep co-hosting and to check her energy again before agreeing to lead a new Circle. She also notices that she had assumed hosting itself was the problem, and would have stepped back from something she enjoys if she hadn’t looked more closely.
Companion tool: Personal energy review
Activity log (two weeks)
| Date | Activity | Features (time, size, role, preparation) | Energized / Neutral / Drained |
|---|---|---|---|
Patterns I notice: ________
Avoidable friction: ________
One adjustment: ________
Who I need to talk to: ________
Review date: ________
Did it help? ________
Boundaries
- Energy varies for many reasons outside these activities, including health, family and workload. Interpret patterns with care.
- Some important commitments will always be demanding. The aim is to make them sustainable, not to avoid all effort.
- If you feel persistently exhausted, consider speaking with your manager, a trusted person or a health professional.
Member action
Compare how you feel after three different community activities and adjust one. Write a few words after each one, before your memory of how it felt fades.
Discussion prompt
Which professional activities give you energy, and which take more than you expect?
