For many years, my attitude to performance was 'head down, push on through.'
It got results, of a kind.
But there was a version of it that felt like dragging myself through concrete.
Late nights or weekend on work that after a while I felt nothing about, ticking boxes rather than coming alive in any of it.
Then there was the other kind.
When I did my professional coach training, I regularly gave up weekends.
Friday afternoon to Sunday evening, and back to work Monday morning. I never felt resentment. Simply energy, and a real aliveness in doing what I loved.
Same amount of time 'sacrificed.' Completely different experience of it.
I see the same thing with clients. The ones grinding hardest aren't always doing their best work. Often the opposite.
Pushing through has a ceiling.
The leaders I work with usually hit it somewhere in their mid-forties, after years of applying real discipline to the wrong things.
Your energy doesn't lie about this.
The work that pulls you in, that makes weekends feel too short, that has you offering ideas nobody asked for. That's pointing somewhere.
The more useful question isn't how much harder you can push. It's whether what you're pushing towards actually lights you up.
Where in your work do you feel energy and where do you only feel obligation?
Photo by Julius Carmine on Unsplash