What makes you tired, and what makes you depleted?

Photo by Vladislav Muslakov on Unsplash

This is the first Medium story I’ve written in several months. And I’m returning to the whitespace canvas simply because I listened to this episode of the HBR Ideacast after feeling depressed for a few days. It got me to spend some time thinking about:

1. My strengths
2. My weaknesses
3. What fills me up
4. What exhausts me
5. What depletes me

If I were to make a list of Column A: Love It and Column B: Loathe It as the guests on this podcast episode suggest we do, most of the writing stuff would be in Column A.

But, if I were to add a Column C and entitle it: Exhausting, well, then, most of the writing stuff would be there, too… and that’s why I haven’t been writing in my “spare,” not-at-work time.

However. If I were to take it one step further, and add a Column D: Depleted, then it would be things like expense reports. IT tickets. Budget analysis. Basically anything in Excel.

Now, I have very good friends who feel very differently — who get energized at the thought of bulding a good, solid Excel dashboard to give their leaders a snapshot of quarterly earnings. And I realize that we cannot get by in the workplace without their gifts.