Arena 5 of 7
Depletion
What is this costing, and who is paying?
What the weather does
The load has gone on too long. Your judgment is worse than it was, and you are the last one to notice, because the thing that would notice is the thing that is depleted. The cost is real, and someone is paying it. Often it is not you.
What it looks like
A leader
The job is unsustainable and everyone knows it. You have been running on adrenaline for a year. You are shorter with people, slower to decide, quicker to assume the worst. You tell yourself it will ease up after this next thing.
A parent
You are carrying the worry, the logistics, and the nightly practice. There is nothing left for the rest of the family, and the kid can feel that, which makes the practice worse.
A teenager
Sports, school, work, friends, sleep. Something has to give, and the body usually decides before you do.
Two directions
Too much
Pushing through. Treating rest as weakness. Extracting the cost from yourself, or from the people around you, and calling it commitment. Usually Extraction, Fixation, or Overreach.
Too little
Collapse. Dropping everything at once, including the parts that were working. Or quietly disappearing while still technically present. Usually Resignation or Holding back.
Stories we tell ourselves
“I’ll rest when this is done.”
“Everyone’s tired. That’s the job.”
“If I stop, it all falls apart.”
“I’m fine.”
The work
Name the real cost before it names itself. Count what you have actually stopped doing well. Build the pause in on purpose, before the crash, and treat it as part of the work rather than a break from it. Decide what you will stop doing, not just what you will add.
When others are in it
People in Depletion cannot see it clearly, which is the whole problem. Tell them what you see, specifically. Then take something off their plate rather than offering to.
When you set the weather
If your team is depleted, look at what you are asking for and what you are modeling. Pace is set from the top. Stop something publicly. Protect recovery time as fiercely as you protect deadlines.
Next arena