The Quiet Kind of Tired

When leadership fatigue isn’t burnout, just too much held for too long

There is something about this time of year that does odd things to people. The calendar says things should be slowing down, but mentally, many leaders are only just realizing how tired they are.

Not the dramatic, everything-is-on-fire kind of tired.
The quieter version.
The kind that comes from holding too much for too long and calling it professionalism.

This is usually when the questions show up. Not the existential ones, but the practical ones you think about while standing in line for bad coffee at an office holiday party.

Why does everything still feel harder than it should?
Why do I keep reacting instead of choosing?
Why does calm feel like something I used to have, not something I can reliably draw on anymore?

What I see over and over again is not a lack of competence or not knowing the “right” answers. It is noise.

Too many priorities competing at once.
Too many moments where speed gets rewarded and steadiness quietly slips out the side door.
Too many days spent managing other people’s urgency instead of leading your own agenda.

By the time the year-end holidays arrive and people start thinking about what comes next, most are not looking to reinvent themselves. They are looking for relief.

A way to breathe again while still doing the job well.
A chance to start the year with a cleaner slate that does not involve deleting half an inbox and pretending that will fix everything.

If that sounds familiar, here are a few small shifts I’ve seen help. No resolutions. No new systems. Just pressure releases that ease the cognitive load instead of adding to it.

First, stop deciding everything in real time.

Many leaders are not overwhelmed because the work is complex. They are overwhelmed because they are constantly making decisions on the fly. Pick one to three things you will no longer debate every day.

When you schedule meetings.
How quickly you respond to messages.
What “good enough” looks like for routine work.

Decide once. Write it down somewhere you can easily refer to. Let that pre-made decision run quietly in the background of your personal operating system. Fewer daily decisions means more usable energy.

Second, put a boundary around one recurring drain.

Not your entire calendar. Not an entire team. Just one thing that reliably leaves you more tired than it should.

A meeting that always runs long.
A person you over-explain yourself to.
A habit of saying yes when you really mean “let me think about it for a day first.”

Decide in advance how you will handle that one situation differently and stick with it long enough for your nervous system to notice. This is not about being firm. It is about being predictable and giving your brain the relief that comes from already knowing how you will respond.

Third, build in a weekly pause that is not for planning.

Let me repeat. Not. For. Planning.

Most people hear the word reflection and immediately turn it into homework. Skip that. Once a week, take ten minutes to ask a simpler question.

What made things harder than they needed to be this week?
What quietly helped?

No fixing. No optimizing. Just noticing. Over time, this gives you better data than any productivity tool ever will.

None of this will make you a new person in a month. That is the point.

These are not transformation tactics. They are pressure releases. They make the work feel more manageable, which is often what people are actually craving when they say they want change.

That is also the space my Leadership Glow Up Sprint was designed for. Not a dramatic overhaul, but a focused reset that helps you see your patterns clearly, steady yourself under pressure, and lead in a way that fits instead of fights you.

You do not need a bold new year. You need fewer things pulling at you at once and a clearer sense of how you want to show up when things get noisy again.

Less, not more.

Sometimes that is the most meaningful reset there is.