Some days I finish a long run completely exhausted. My legs are tired. My breathing is heavy. I've pushed myself physically for over an hour. But I feel good.

Other days, I can spend an hour answering emails, chasing information, or dealing with unnecessary interruptions and feel more drained than I did after that run.

Same amount of time. Very different experience. It raises an important question.

Is the work actually draining your energy, or is it simply demanding something worthwhile from you?

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Not All Effort Is Created Equal

We tend to think of energy in simple terms. Something either gives us energy or takes it away. But I've found it's rarely that straightforward.

Writing a book takes energy. Preparing for a keynote takes energy. Training for a race takes energy. Having a difficult but necessary conversation takes energy.

These things can be demanding, uncomfortable, and sometimes exhausting. But they also create something.

Progress. Growth. Clarity. A sense of accomplishment.

Compare that with a day spent navigating unclear expectations, unnecessary meetings, repeated problems, and decisions that never seem to get made.

You can finish that day exhausted without feeling like you've moved forward at all. The difference isn't necessarily how much energy you used.

It's what that energy produced.

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Resistance and Drag Are Different

One of the principles I teach inside Momentum Shift is that resistance creates lift. But there's an important distinction between resistance that helps us grow and drag that holds us back.

During my years in aviation, demanding work was part of the job. Preparing aircraft, maintaining standards, navigating changing conditions, and making decisions under pressure all required effort.

The objective was never to eliminate that effort. It was to remove unnecessary friction so we could focus on operating safely and effectively.

Leadership works the same way. A difficult conversation might be uncomfortable, but avoiding it can create weeks of unnecessary tension. 

Learning a new skill requires effort, but constantly working around an outdated process creates frustration without meaningful improvement.

Both require energy. Only one is necessarily moving you forward.

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Remove the Drag. Keep the Challenge.

This is where Remove Before Flight becomes useful.

We often assume the answer to feeling drained is doing less. Sometimes it is.

Recovery matters, and even meaningful work becomes unsustainable without enough of it. But sometimes the better answer is to examine what we're spending our energy on.

Are we exhausted because we're working toward something meaningful? Or because we're fighting the same unnecessary problems every day?

That's an important distinction.

You don't accelerate by doing more. You accelerate by removing drag.

The goal isn't to make everything easy. It's to remove the friction that prevents you from doing the difficult things that matter.

Read this article on the pressures of always being available.

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Today's Shift

Think about where your energy has gone this week. Ask yourself two questions:

What demanding work is actually moving me forward?

What unnecessary friction is consuming energy without creating progress?

Keep making room for the first.

Start removing the second.

Because not everything that takes energy is draining you.

Sometimes it's the very work that builds your momentum.

If this resonated, join The Shift—my weekly newsletter on leadership, energy, and systems, where we build sustainable momentum one shift at a time.

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Chris Wilson