The Hidden Things Draining Your Energy (And What To Do About Them)
For a long time, my alarm would go off at 6am and before I'd even opened my eyes, the to-do list was already running. The meetings, the emails, the thing I forgot to do yesterday, the thing I was dreading doing today. By 7am I was already exhausted. And by 3pm I was running purely on caffeine and sheer willpower.
I didn't think there was anything actually wrong, I just assumed this was what life was like, that everyone felt this way. Collapsing into bed at the end of the day felt like a badge of honour, like I'd had a good day. Kind of like that feeling of exhaustion you get after a good workout.
But unlike the workout, the results were often less reliable. The days I was most exhausted were often the days I'd achieved the least. And I see this a lot in the people I chat to at school pick-up. They say they're exhausted, but feel like they've got nothing done. And the reality is, more often than not, that's true. If you wrote down what they actually achieved that day, it wouldn't be a lot. They were busy, their mind was running like crazy, but actual output was minimal.
And this is because the reason most of us are exhausted has very little to do with how much we're actually doing, and everything to do with what is draining us, and whether we're stopping long enough to notice.
Energy Is Not Just Physical
When we think about energy, most of us go straight to sleep and exercise. And yes, both matter. But in my experience, the women who are most depleted are not the ones sleeping, or moving the least. They're the ones carrying invisible weight, weight that never shows up on a to-do list, but drains them all the same.
In my work both in corporate and in my coaching practice, there are four consistent energy drains I see, and most of us are bleeding from all four simultaneously.
Mental drains are the thoughts that won't stop. The replaying of conversations. The worrying about things that haven't happened yet. The mental to-do list that runs in the background of every meeting, every dinner, every quiet moment you try to have. I had a client who told me she couldn't remember the last time her mind was quiet, not even in the shower. That is a mental drain, and it is exhausting. Side note: for those of you going through perimenopause, this becomes an even bigger problem due to our hormones.
Emotional drains are often the heaviest, and the hardest to manage, because they're frequently tied to the people we love most, and therefore don't feel optional. The worry about your child who is struggling. Your parents who are getting older. The fear that hums quietly in the background when something feels off. The mental energy spent running worst-case scenarios that haven't happened and likely never will.
Physical drains are the obvious ones, not enough sleep, too much caffeine, skipping meals, sitting still all day in back-to-back meetings. Or conversely pushing your body harder than it can recover from. But physical drains also include ignoring what your body is telling you. Pushing through when you're sick. Saying yes to another commitment when your body is crying out for rest.
Time drains are the commitments, tasks and activities that eat your hours without giving anything back. The meetings that could have been an email. The tasks you keep doing because you've always done them, even though someone else could. The scrolling. The saying yes to things you really wanted to say no to. Time is finite, when it goes to the wrong things, there is nothing left for the right ones. And I find when you are wasting time on tasks that give nothing back, you notice not only the time drain but the mental drain of resentment for wasting you time.
The Audit That Changed Everything For Me
When working in corporate, I was very aware of these drains, and managed for them as deliberately. When I started my business I noticed that with the change in schedule I was becoming increasingly drained and if I looked honestly back on my day, my output wasn’t where I wanted it. So I worked with my coach on this and she asked me to do something that felt almost insultingly simple. She asked me to write down everything that gave me energy and everything that took it away.
I rolled my eyes internally. I thought I knew the answer. Work gives me energy. My son and time with friends give me energy. Eating well and working out gives me energy.
But when I actually sat down and completed the audit honestly, when I really paid attention for a week to how I felt before and after every interaction, every task, every commitment , I was confronted with how little time I was spending on things that replenished me, and how much time I was spending on activities that bore few results but sucked a huge amount of my energy.
I also noticed that when I was most vulnerable to leaning on energy-draining behaviours, was precisely when I was most in need of something that replenished me.
And uncomfortably, I noticed that some of the things I thought were giving me energy were actually draining me. While a lot of the things I'd been dismissing as indulgent, a walk without my phone, lunch away from my desk, time with a friend who made me laugh, were the things actually filling me back up.
I had built a schedule optimised for output with almost no thought given to input. I was constantly withdrawing from an account I was never replenishing.
If you've never done an energy audit, I want to invite you to try it, just for one week. Notice how you feel before and after things. Notice what leaves you lighter and what leaves you heavier. Don't judge it, just notice. Because you cannot fix a leak you don't know you have.
Why Planning Your Day Is an Energy Strategy, Not a Productivity One
Something I wish we were taught in school, or in some kind of "things you should know if you want to live a great life" handbook, is that the way you structure your day either protects your energy or destroys it.
Most of us approach our days reactively. We open our email and let that set the agenda. We fill every white space in our calendar, trying to squeeze as much in as possible. We context-switch between deep thinking, admin, meetings and creative work without a second thought, and then wonder why our brain feels like mush by 2pm.
I had a client, a senior leader, who was brilliant at her job but felt perpetually behind. When we looked at her calendar together, we saw the problem immediately. Her most cognitively demanding work, the strategic thinking, the writing, the complex problem-solving, was scattered randomly across the day. She was trying to do deep work at 4pm, sandwiched between back-to-back meetings. No wonder she was exhausted.
We reorganised her week around one simple principle: protect your peak hours for your most important work. For her, that was the first two hours of her morning. No meetings, no email. Just the work that required her best thinking.
Within two weeks she told me she felt like a different person. The volume of work hadn't changed. Her energy had.
Planning your day is not about fitting more in. It is about being intentional with what you protect. Ask yourself: what is the one thing that, if I did it well today, would make everything else easier or less necessary? That is your priority, and your energy planning should work backwards from there.
Practical Tips to Start Reclaiming Your Energy This Week
Do an energy audit. For the next seven days, rate how you feel before and after your key activities and interactions. Use a simple scale of 1–10. You'll quickly see the patterns.
Identify your top three drains. Looking at your audit, what are the three things consistently draining you? This includes mental drains, the things you find yourself ruminating or worrying about repeatedly. These are your starting point. You don't have to eliminate them all overnight, but naming them is the beginning of changing them.
Protect your peak hours. Work out when you're at your sharpest, most people peak in the late morning. Block that time in your calendar for your most important work and treat it like a meeting you cannot cancel.
Set one non-negotiable daily for yourself. Not for your work. Not for your family. For you. It could be a 20-minute walk, 10 minutes of quiet, a lunch break you actually take. One thing, every day, that fills you up rather than empties you.
Build in micro-replenishment moments. These are short investments of time that come directly after a task you know will drain you. I used to build in a 10-minute break after workshops or trade meetings, just enough time to get outside, breathe and drink a glass of water instead of aimlessly checking emails. So simple, but it had a huge impact on how I showed up to my next task and how I felt at the end of the day. For those of you who find yourself desperately grabbing for a glass of wine at the end of the day, this one’s for you.
Stop multi-tasking and start batching. Context-switching is one of the biggest energy leaks there is. Instead of jumping between tasks all day, batch similar activities together, emails at set times, calls grouped back-to-back, admin in one dedicated block. Your brain will thank you.
Deal with your mental load. The racing thoughts, the endless mental to-do list, the replaying of conversations, this is often the biggest energy drain of all, and the least talked about. Getting your thoughts out of your head and onto paper is one of the most powerful things you can do to feel calmer, clearer and more in control.
You Don't Need More Hours. You Need to Stop the Leaks.
Energy is not something you either have, or you don't. It is something you manage. And when you start managing it intentionally, when you identify what is draining you and start being deliberate about what you protect, everything changes.
The trouble is that we've been raised in a busy culture. We've been told to be proud of pouring everything from our cup, and often made to feel ashamed of actually refilling it. I remember a family member, who shall remain nameless, sarcastically saying to me, "Oh it must be nice to have enough time to go to yoga. If only all of us could be that lucky."
But it is not luck. It is deliberate. And I can promise you, if you manage your energy drains and proactively fill your cup, you show up differently. You think more clearly. You stop reacting to everything. The little things that used to derail you, no longer will, and you'll find yourself with more energy, even while getting everything you need done.
It doesn't require a complete life overhaul. It starts with one small, honest look at where your energy is going right now.
Ready to start?
One of the biggest sources of energy drain I see in women over 40 is mental load, the constant mental chatter, the unprocessed thoughts, the overthinking that runs in the background of everything. I've created a free 5-minute tool to help you reduce your mental load, clear the clutter and feel more in control of how you feel each day.
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