Last month, a VP I work with confessed something she’d never said out loud: “I used to wake up with ideas. Now I wake up exhausted by the thought of my inbox.” She wasn’t depressed. She wasn’t unmotivated. She was physiologically bankrupt. And she thought it was her fault.
If you’ve ever felt guilty for being tired despite “having it all together,” you’re not broken. You’re in what I call Energy Debt and it has nothing to do with your character. It’s a nervous system in overdraft.
The Problem Isn’t Burnout. It’s Chronic Energy Withdrawal.
We talk about burnout as if it is all or nothing. You are either fine or you have hit a wall. But the truth is more precise. Your body operates like a checking account. Every decision, every meeting, every emotional regulation attempt is a withdrawal. Rest, connection, play, and purpose are deposits.
Most leaders? They’ve been writing checks their nervous system can’t cash for years.
Here’s what’s happening under the surface: your prefrontal cortex (the part responsible for strategy, empathy, and self control) is energy intensive. When you’re chronically overdrawn, your brain starts rationing resources. You lose access to creativity first. Then patience. Then the ability to care about things that used to matter.
You don’t need more discipline. You need a different relationship with your energy economy.
The Energy Audit Framework: Deposits vs. Withdrawals
Start by mapping your week through this lens:
Energy Withdrawals (the obvious and the invisible):
- Back to back meetings with no transition time
- Saying yes when you mean no
- Holding back negative feelings.
- Feeling tired because you have many unfinished tasks on your mind
- Operating in environments misaligned with your values
Energy Deposits (most people wildly underestimate these):
- 10 minutes of doing absolutely nothing
- A conversation where you don’t have to perform
- Things that feel relaxing, not punishment
- Work that uses your signature strengths
- Boundaries that protect your attention
The gap between these two columns is your debt load.
The 3 Step Recovery Protocol (No Sabbatical Required)
Step 1: Stop the Bleeding Identify your top 3 energy drains this week. Eliminate one. Delegate one. Renegotiate one. You don’t need to optimize your whole life. You need to stop hemorrhaging.
Step 2: Install Micro Deposits Add one 5 minute energy deposit into your morning and one into your afternoon. Not “self care.” Actual restoration. Staring out a window counts. A 3 minute walk counts. Sitting in your car in silence counts.
Step 3: Audit Your Calendar for Misalignment Look at your recurring commitments. Which ones deplete you not because they’re hard, but because they conflict with who you are? Leaders don’t burn out from hard work. They burn out from meaningless work dressed up as important work.
What Recovery Actually Looks Like
That VP I mentioned? She didn’t quit her job or take a month off. She started with Step 1: she stopped attending a weekly meeting that existed only because it had always existed. Then she blocked 15 minutes before her calls to just sit. Not prep. Just exist.
Within three weeks, she told me: “I didn’t realize how much energy I’d been spending bracing for my own life.”
Her performance didn’t suffer. It improved. Because energy debt doesn’t make you more productive. It makes you survive instead of lead.
Your Reflection Question
If your energy were a bank account, what would your statement look like right now? And what’s one withdrawal you’re ready to stop making?
The leaders who recover aren’t the ones who rest more. They’re the ones who stop treating exhaustion like a moral failure and start treating energy like the strategic resource it is. You’re not lazy. You’re just overdrawn. And that’s fixable.
Jonathan Riley is a Leadership Coach whose work combines psychology, business insight, and systems thinking to shape effective and sustainable leadership. Author of The Boundaries Bible, The Antidote to Burnout, and A Leader’s Way, he helps leaders master performance, balance, and purpose through his advisory work and Mastermind Groups. Learn more at mypracticeleaders.com.au