Dear Change Leader,
Priya came back from a week at the lake and, during her first Monday meeting, experienced an all-too-familiar feeling.
Not from anything anyone said. She just looked at her calendar, noticed a tightness returning to her chest, and realized: she felt exactly as depleted as she had the Friday before she left.
As VP of Operations at a regional health company, Priya had been running at full capacity for over a year — a merger, a funding cliff, two rounds of layoffs she’d had to deliver herself. She’d told herself the lake week would fix it. Seven days, no laptop, mountain air. She’d done everything “right.”
“I don’t understand,” she told me. “I took time off. Why don’t I feel rested?”
Why Rest Isn’t the Same as Recovery
Here’s the thing Priya’s calendar couldn’t tell her: she’d been managing her time for a year, but she’d never once managed her energy.
That distinction comes from the performance researchers Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. They spent years studying elite athletes before turning their attention to executives — and found the two groups were making the same mistake. Athletes don’t try to perform at full intensity for hours on end; they train in oscillations, deliberately alternating full exertion with real recovery. It’s the oscillations that build capacity. Executives, by contrast, treat themselves like they should run at a steady pace indefinitely — no bursts, no dips, just an unbroken plateau of “on.”
The problem is that this is not how humans restore energy. And a week at the lake, if you spend it bracing for what’s waiting in your inbox, isn’t recovery. It’s just a change of scenery layered on top of the same depletion.
Loehr and Schwartz also point out that energy isn’t just one thing — there are physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual elements, and each runs down and refills differently. You can be well-rested physically and still running on empty emotionally. Priya’s week off had restored her body. It hadn’t touched the rest.
Three Practices for Managing Energy, Not Just Time
- Build oscillation into your actual week — not just your vacation.
Recovery that only happens once or twice a year can’t offset a grind that happens fifty weeks a year. Real renewal needs to show up in the rhythm of your normal week, not just the exception to it.
This week: Block two 20-minute “hard stops” — mid-morning and mid-afternoon — where you genuinely disengage. Walk outside. No phone. Not a break to check email faster. - Make emotional deposits, not just withdrawals.
Every difficult conversation, every decision under pressure, every meeting you brace for — those are withdrawals. If nothing is going back into that account, depletion is just a matter of time, vacation or not.
This week: Notice one interaction that actually gives you energy — a colleague, a piece of the work itself — and protect time for it deliberately, the same way you’d protect a hard deadline. - Reconnect briefly with why this matters.
Mental and spiritual energy comes from a sense of purpose, not from downtime. Ironically, this is often neglected when leaders are exhausted, even though it’s what replenishes the reserve tank.
This week: Before your next hard week begins, write one sentence answering: “Why does this work matter to me, right now?” Keep it somewhere you’ll actually see it.
The Real Fix
Priya didn’t need a longer vacation. She needed to stop treating recovery as something that happens once a year, somewhere else, and start treating it as a discipline woven through an ordinary Tuesday.
The grind may not be ending anytime soon. But your capacity to meet it doesn’t have to be a fixed, shrinking resource — not if you start managing it the way it actually works.
Until next time,
P.S. If you’re noticing that even your time off isn’t touching the exhaustion, that’s often a sign worth exploring with someone outside the situation. I’d welcome a conversation.
Recent Articles
Read other editions of this newsletter for further insights:
- “Recalibrating When Everything Feels Urgent” explores how leaders can regain focus when every demand feels equally critical.
- “You’re Not Meant to Lead Alone“ looks at why leadership can feel so isolating — and three practical ways to build real support.
- “The Silence Speaks Volumes“ names why the leaders who most need support are often the ones least able to reach for it.
EFFECTIVE CHANGE RESULTS FROM INTENTIONAL LEADERSHIP
We’re a leadership and organization development consultancy. My team and I work with leaders like you to prepare for and lead successful change processes.
Here’s why our clients call us:
- Leadership Coaching: I support leaders as they navigate transitions into new roles or expanded responsibilities.
- Group Programs: Bringing groups of leaders together, I facilitate learning experiences and months-long programs that equip people to be effective change leaders.
- Effective Teams and Organizations: I work with leaders and their teams with tailored processes that increase their effectiveness, building layers of aligned teams that transform organizations.