I finished a Tuesday with three meetings and a half-written proposal. Light, by any reasonable measure. But by 4pm, I felt like I had presented to a stadium, run a half-marathon, AND lost an argument with my WiFi router. All at once. Ever have one of those days where you look at your calendar and think, Wait…why am I THIS tired?!

I spent 18-months working alongside PhD researchers studying more than 10,000 people to better understand exactly that. And one of the biggest things I learned was this: the amount of work you do and the amount of energy your day costs you are NOT always the same thing. Especially when you work remotely.

We’ve gotten really good at auditing our TIME. How many meetings? How many hours? How much did I get done? But when was the last time you audited your ENERGY? Because sometimes it isn’t the big presentation or giant project draining you. It’s the 47 tiny things surrounding the work that are quietly stealing your fuel all day long.

A few sneaky ones to watch:

Decision fatigue. Before you’ve made one actually important decision, you’ve already decided where to work, what to tackle first, whether to answer that Slack, when to eat lunch, whether that email needs a response NOW, and approximately 900 other tiny things. No wonder your brain wants to clock out at 3pm.

Digital noise. Email. Slack. Text. Teams. Notifications. Tabs. That little red bubble basically screaming, YOU HAVE ANOTHER THING TO DO! Even when you aren’t responding, being constantly reachable can make it harder to give your full energy to what’s actually in front of you.

Invisible admin. You’re not just doing your job. Some days you’re also the office manager, IT department, lunch lady, package receiver, appointment scheduler, and person wondering why the freaking printer suddenly refuses to print. None of that appears on your calendar, but it still costs energy.

Ambient loneliness. Remote work can be wonderfully flexible AND weirdly isolating. You can spend an entire day interacting with people through little squares on a screen without experiencing much actual connection, and so sometimes what feels like “I’m exhausted” is really “I need another human.”

Before you completely overhaul your calendar, buy another productivity system, or decide you need to become a person who wakes up at 5am and cold plunges before answering email, try this for one week.

Check your energy three times a day: morning, midday, and end of day. Don’t track how much you accomplished. Track how you FEEL. When did your energy change? What were you doing right before it happened? Who were you with? What were you thinking about? What was happening around you? You’re looking for patterns. Because you can’t change an energy drain you haven’t identified yet.

Want a little help figuring out where YOUR energy stands right now? Take my free Energy Exam, a quick assessment designed to help you get a clearer picture of your current energy and where you may have opportunities to protect, replenish, and use it more intentionally.

And if you want to go even deeper into understanding what fuels you, what drains you, and how to work WITH your natural energy instead of constantly fighting against it, that’s exactly why I wrote my newest book, The Energy Edge.

Because at the end of the day, your energy impacts how you show up, how you lead, how you connect, and what you’re capable of creating.

Your energy is your edge.