Executive Energy and Burnout: Energy Is the Asset Everything Else Spends

I run myself hard, physically and emotionally, and I've learned one thing above almost everything else: energy is the asset everything else spends. Your judgment, your patience, your presence with your family, and your ability to make the hard call at 4 PM all draw on the same account. When it runs low, every part of your life pays for it.

This guide is for the executive or founder over 45 who is successful, busy, and tired in a way that a weekend no longer fixes. He's running on a balance he isn't refilling, and he's started to feel it.

Why does energy matter more than time?

Time is fixed. Everyone gets the same 24 hours. Energy is what decides what those hours are worth.

I think of it as a chain: energy drives performance drives meaning. Physical energy from sleep, fuel, and training sharpens your decisions and steadies you under pressure. Better decisions free up time, and that margin is where meaning lives: your family, your health, the things you've been postponing.

The chain also runs in reverse, and that's how most men lose it. Low energy or high stress wrecks your eating. Poor eating wrecks your sleep and your mental capacity. That degrades your business judgment and your presence at home, which adds stress, and the loop tightens. Because it runs both ways, I fix the basics first. When a man brings me a business problem, one of my first questions is whether he's sleeping and how he's eating.

I tell every leader I work with the same thing: you are the biggest asset in the business. Run the asset into the ground and the business follows.

How do I know if I'm burning out?

Start with hours. My standing rule is the 45-hour rule: if anyone in my company consistently works more than 45 hours, something is broken, and I want to know about it. More than that is burnout. Even if the person thinks they can handle it, their family can't.

When the hours run over, check three things. The culture may be broken, pushing people to stay late to look committed. The ask may be broken, with more scope than one person can carry. Or the person may be breaking himself. All three can be fixed, and the family's experience of the work is the tell the P&L never shows.

Then look past the hours, because burnout isn't always about hours. Some men work 40 hours and carry it home all night. The body clocks out and the brain never does. The rumination after hours is what does the damage: it wrecks rest, which weakens recovery, which makes you more reactive, which makes the work harder to put down the next day. The disguise here is even better than long hours. It sounds like "I just care a lot." That's the work living in you instead of you living your life.

Is work addiction real?

Work is as addictive as anything else, and it's harder to see because the world rewards it. Nobody stages an intervention for the man working 70 hours a week. They give him an award.

Most men who are hiding in work don't call it addiction. They call it success. "I'm not addicted, I'm just successful." My question back is simpler: are you miserable? The addiction that looks like achievement is the hardest kind to see and the last kind to admit.

Work rewards you fastest, so it crowds out what rewards you deepest: your body, your marriage, your sense of purpose. When I see it, the work usually isn't the real problem. It's the hiding place, and the fix starts in the Being leg, with what the man has been avoiding.

How do I get the same results in fewer hours?

Try the 35-hour challenge. If you tell me you never work more than 45 hours, produce the same output in 35 for two weeks. If you can, the extra hours were noise rather than value, and the time you get back goes to the things that actually fill you up.

The constraint forces a discipline I teach in the Business leg: your MITs, your Most Important Things. Each morning, pick the few things that will move the needle. If your three most important things are done, you're done for the day.

It's the same lesson as the college all-nighter. After 11 PM you're not learning anything; you're just getting tired. Take your C and go to bed. Work has the same point of diminishing returns, and most driven men are well past it.

What role does sleep play?

You can't out-train, out-eat, or out-work bad sleep. Sleep is required. I treat it the way I treat training and eating: non-negotiable, done consistently, over a long time. It's the only way I recover from how hard I run, and when I get it right, my energy and focus are strongest in the first half of the next day.

My floor is eight or more hours a night. Here's what I personally do to hold it:

• A fixed wake time. I wake at the same time no matter when I go to bed, so I can't sleep in to repay a late night. That makes bedtime the lever, and I protect it.
• A wind-down hour. No serious conversations and no work in the last hour. I keep it light: reading, a show with my wife, word puzzles, or a walk after dinner.
• Devices off. No laptop, tablet, or phone within an hour of bed.
• Track the stages, not just the total. I use two devices so one can cover for the other, and I watch deep sleep, REM, heart-rate variability, and resting heart rate. Total hours are the floor; the stages are the signal.

When I have a bad night, I don't overcorrect. One bad night isn't a crisis. I wind down better the next night, go to bed about 30 minutes earlier, and never move the wake time. If I'm awake for more than about 20 minutes, I get up, read or sit quietly, and go back to bed when my mind settles.

For me the stakes are specific. If I'm run down for even two days, old MS symptoms from damage done years ago start to resurface. The sleep data lets me catch the slide early. That's my experience with my own body, not medical advice, and if you have trouble sleeping or suspect a sleep disorder, take it to your physician.

How do I disconnect when everyone expects me to be available?

I call it Disconnected on Purpose, and it starts with how you say it. Not "I'm not available." Say "I am disconnecting," out loud, as a point of pride. I tell my wife, Julie, when I step out for a walk or a workout, and I tell my team when I go on vacation.

The line that makes it possible is one we share: I'm simply not that important. I'm more important to the people who know me, and zero to those who don't. The world will go on without me. The key word is zero. The business will run.

The practice, from smallest to biggest:

• The morning gate. The first 30 minutes are mine. No screen until I've had water and fed myself. I use the time for sunlight, a slow start, coffee with Julie, and picking the day's MITs. My morning routine sets the tone of my day.
• Move the work apps. Keep email, Slack, and business apps off your phone's first screen. Out of sight is one less pull.
• No-device walks. The phone stays home.
• Evening unplug. Off devices about an hour before bed.
• One screen-free day every week.
• Vacations that are real. Text on for family; no email, no browsing, no social.

There's a reason this matters beyond rest. I can't listen to the person in the same room with a phone in my hand. Presence is the price of a real shared experience, and shared experiences are what I value most in life.

If you run a team, make disconnection a shared norm. At companies I've run, the team agreed that anyone checking email or Slack during agreed time off paid a small fine into a kitty for parties and gifts. It turned "off" into something people protected together.

Does my physical condition affect how I lead?

Yes, and people notice before you say a word. A room reads posture, energy, and presence immediately, and treats them as signals of competence and discipline. Sleep, fuel, and training show up as a clearer face, better posture, and sharper engagement. The body buys you the first ten seconds. What you do with them is the business.

Fuel matters as much as sleep. Food is fuel or it's poison. Get it right and you power judgment, energy, and recovery. Get it wrong and you erode all three. The point is bigger than your waistline. It's your capacity to lead, decide, and show up.

Where energy fits in the three legs

I coach three legs: Body, Business, and Being, held together by three through-lines. One of them is Basic Self-Care: fuel, sleep, and space. It's how you sustain everything else. It's simple to say and easy to shortchange, which is why I teach it first.

If you want to know which leg is your weakest right now, take the diagnostic. It takes a few minutes and tells you where to start.