Sometimes we finish a busy day feeling perfectly fine. On another day, seemingly ordinary things leave us completely drained. Why?
You haven’t run a marathon.
You haven’t spent twelve hours doing physical work.
In fact, when you think about it, you haven’t done anything particularly remarkable.
And yet by late afternoon, you’re exhausted.
Then there are other days when you’re constantly on the move and somehow still have energy in the evening.
It seems strange until we consider that tiredness isn’t simply a measure of how much physical activity we’ve done.
A day can demand a great deal from us without looking particularly busy at all.
Is physical activity the only thing that makes us tired?
Clearly not.
Most of us have experienced exhaustion after a day spent largely sitting down.
A difficult meeting can be tiring. So can concentrating intensely, travelling, making important decisions or spending hours navigating an unfamiliar situation.
Physical effort is only one demand we place on ourselves.
Attention takes effort too.
So does dealing with uncertainty, controlling our reactions and constantly switching from one task to another.
That helps explain why two days containing roughly the same number of hours can feel completely different.
Why can concentrating be so tiring?
Imagine spending three hours trying to understand something complicated.
You’re sitting in a chair. Physically, very little is happening.
But your attention is working hard.
You’re processing information, ignoring distractions, remembering details and trying to make connections.
Compare that with spending three hours doing something familiar that you enjoy.
The time might be identical.
The experience isn’t.
Mental effort doesn’t always look like effort from the outside.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t demanding.
What about all the little decisions we make?
What should I wear?
Should I reply now?
What shall we eat tonight?
Which task should I do first?
Is this important enough to deal with today?
Individually, these decisions are trivial.
Collectively, they can make a day feel surprisingly cluttered.
Some days contain very few choices because everything is straightforward.
Other days seem to require a decision every five minutes.
It may not be one enormous decision that leaves us feeling depleted. Sometimes it’s the accumulation of dozens of small ones.
Why are some social situations exhausting?
This varies enormously between people.
A lively dinner with ten people might energise one person and leave another wanting complete silence for the rest of the evening.
And it isn’t simply about being an introvert or an extrovert.
The company matters.
Spending two hours with people around whom you can completely relax may feel very different from spending two hours carefully monitoring what you say.
Some social situations require us to listen closely, interpret other people’s reactions, remember names, make conversation or manage disagreements.
A pleasant occasion can still require energy.
Enjoying something and finding it tiring aren’t mutually exclusive.
Does worrying make us tired?
It certainly doesn’t make a day feel easier.
One difficulty with worry is that it can continue while we’re doing something else.
You’re answering emails, but part of your attention is on tomorrow’s appointment.
You’re cooking dinner while replaying a conversation from earlier.
You’re watching television but thinking about a problem at work.
The original task hasn’t disappeared. We’ve simply added another layer to it.
Sometimes the thing making us tired isn’t what we’re doing.
It’s everything we’re thinking about while we’re doing it.
Why can interruptions make such a difference?
You’re halfway through something when a message arrives.
You answer it.
Then an email appears.
Someone asks you a question.
You return to the original task and have to remember where you were.
None of those interruptions may take very long.
But repeatedly shifting attention can make work feel much more demanding.
This is particularly noticeable on days when we’re constantly available to other people.
We may reach the end of the day having completed relatively little while feeling as though we haven’t stopped.
Can enjoyable things still leave us exhausted?
Absolutely.
A wedding can be exhausting.
So can travelling somewhere exciting, spending the day with grandchildren, going to a concert or hosting friends.
We sometimes assume tiredness means something wasn’t good for us.
But energy expenditure isn’t a judgement.
An experience can be wonderful and tiring at exactly the same time.
The question is what we need afterwards.
Are we always good at noticing what drains us?
Probably not.
Obvious demands are easy to identify.
A terrible night’s sleep followed by a ten-hour working day provides a fairly convincing explanation for being tired.
Less obvious patterns can take longer to notice.
Perhaps certain meetings consistently leave you drained.
Maybe you find days filled with interruptions harder than days containing more work but fewer distractions.
Perhaps travelling takes more out of you than you realised.
Or maybe you’re perfectly happy being sociable, but need some quiet afterwards.
Paying attention to those patterns can be more useful than simply telling ourselves we should have more energy.
Maybe energy is something we should notice, not just manage
There is a tendency to treat tiredness as an inconvenience to overcome.
Have another coffee. Push through. Get the next thing done.
Sometimes that’s necessary.
But our energy can also tell us something.
Not every activity costs us the same amount.
Not every conversation does either.
And the things that restore us aren’t necessarily identical from one person to another.
Perhaps wellbeing isn’t about trying to feel energetic all the time.
It may be partly about becoming better at recognising what takes energy from us, what gives some of it back, and when we’ve simply had enough for one day.