“The cure for exhaustion is not rest, but wholeheartedness.” – Unknown

The world is challenging, and some of those challenges can take a lot out of us.  Of all the things I see leaders struggle with, maybe nothing is more common than just being tired.  There are a lot of leaders who simply don’t have the energy to do their jobs at the level they need to be done.

We do all kinds of things to rebuild our energy levels.  Most of those things involve taking time away from work.  Then we come back, and it seems like, within a matter of hours – or even minutes – we feel just as tired as we did before.

I’m not suggesting that we should never take time away from work.  What I would suggest is that just taking time away from work won’t fix anything.  If your car runs out of gas, you wouldn’t just leave it by the side of the road for a couple of weeks and then come back and expect it to start up again.  You’d actually fill it with gas.

The same thing is true for us.  Just sitting somewhere other than your office chair doesn’t refill your tank.  You need to actually do things that build your energy levels.  Some of that stuff sounds obvious – eat right, exercise, sleep, etc.

But what I’m really getting at is this:  What kind of work are you doing?  If the work you do is stuff you’re not really wired for, that takes energy from you, that you just have no passion for, then you have a problem.  No amount of vacation is going to give you the energy you need if your career continues to take it from you.

There are a lot of ways to try and figure out what works best for you (here’s my favorite), but whatever you do, you need to understand what kind of work energizes you and then make sure to get enough of whatever that is.  Yes, we sometimes have to do things that take our energy, but we can’t make a career out of those things.

Think about your energy.  Does your career add to it?  Or take from it?  If what you do exhausts you, a vacation won’t fix it.  You need to re-define what you do, and become a re-energized leader.