Some time ago, I sat down with my journal and looked at how I was actually spending my time.
I noticed something interesting. Some work energized me just thinking about it. Other work felt heavy, even when it made complete logical sense. I saw how some actions pulled me forward, and others I had to push myself to do.
Most leaders operate from push without realizing it. Push feels like obligation, effort, force. It’s driven by should, have to, need to. Pull feels like curiosity and expansion. It’s guided by want to, drawn to, called toward.
That distinction sounds soft. It isn’t. Energy is information about fit, and most leaders have never once audited theirs.
We inherit our definitions of success without realizing it. The revenue milestones. The recognition. The markers that signal you’ve made it. None of these are wrong. But they create a particular kind of exhaustion when they’re driving decisions no one consciously made.
I see this pattern often in the leaders I work with. Remarkable businesses, built by following conventional wisdom about what success should look like. And behind them, leaders who are successful yet exhausted. Recognized yet unfulfilled. The problem isn’t their success. It’s that the version of success they’re serving was defined by someone else. The energy drain is the evidence.
So I tested this on myself. I made two lists.
Everything that felt like pull: the work that energized me just thinking about it. And everything that felt like push: the things I felt I should be doing, that drained me before I even began.
The pull list was short and specific. Working with leaders at genuine inflection points. Deep partnerships over long horizons. Building for alignment, not just scale.
The push list was longer. And every item had the same signature: opportunities I’d said yes to because they looked good on paper. Goals I was pursuing because they seemed like the natural next step.
The pull list described a version of success I’d never clearly articulated but had always recognized. The push list described the version I’d absorbed.
Here’s why this matters beyond fulfillment. Every leader has a natural way of working: conditions where the work builds energy instead of spending it. And most of us drift far from ours without ever deciding to. The calendar fills with what the role attracts rather than what we’re built for. The week hardens around obligations that deplete.
And it doesn’t stay private. Everyone in an organization calibrates to its leader. Your energy becomes the operating climate, whether you design it or not.
The audit takes an hour. List where your time and energy actually go. Sort honestly into pull and push. For each push item, ask what would need to change for it to feel different. Sometimes it’s the approach, not the thing itself. For each pull item, ask what pattern they share. That pattern is a description of how you work at your natural best, and it’s more specific than you’d expect.
Then redesign at the margins. Not a new life. A different distribution.
The goal isn’t eliminating push. Some obligations are simply the work. But the exhaustion that comes from hard work in the right place recovers overnight. The exhaustion that comes from years in the wrong configuration doesn’t. And no amount of discipline resolves it.
Discipline was never the missing piece. The design was.