Being exhausted all the time isn’t proof you’re growing. Sometimes it’s proof you’re leaking.

Tiredness gets treated as a scoreboard, as though the amount you are depleted tells you how much you are achieving. Often it measures something else entirely: a leak somewhere in the week, a commitment that takes and never gives, or rest that has been quietly cancelled. Effort and exhaustion are not the same quantity.

Spend a week noticing what leaves you emptier than the work itself justifies. Look at sleep, at one relationship, at the hours after eleven. Sealing the leak usually buys back more capacity than pushing harder ever does.