The job is taking more out of you than you are getting back
You are still doing the job, but the margin has gone, and it is beginning to show in your patience and your judgement.
You are still doing the job and doing it adequately. What has gone is the margin. You recover more slowly from ordinary days, decisions that used to be straightforward take longer, and you find yourself shorter with people than you intend. This is about what the working week draws out of you and what, if anything, puts it back.
Presenting symptoms
- You recover more slowly from an ordinary day than you used to.
- Decisions you would once have made quickly are being deferred.
- You notice yourself being shorter with people than you intend, and regretting it afterwards.
Possible causes
- The week may contain nothing that replenishes, only things that draw down.
- The load may have grown steadily without anything ever coming off.
- You may be absorbing work that is not yours, because doing it is quicker than handing it on.
- The year may have lost its recovery points, so the pressure has become continuous rather than cyclical.
Nothing in the week puts anything back.
Your most useful next step: Name the one thing that reliably restores you, put it in the diary as a fixed commitment under its own name, and protect your sleep on the nights before your hardest days. Judge it after a half term rather than after a week.
Lead behaviours
The load has grown and nothing has come off.
Your most useful next step: Write down everything added to your own role in the last year and what, if anything, came off to make room. Take the two largest additions and decide for each whether it stays, moves to somebody else, or stops.
Lead behaviours
You are absorbing work that belongs to other people.
Your most useful next step: List three things you did last week that somebody else could have done, and ask one of those colleagues to take one of them from now on. Doing it yourself because it is faster is what built this.
Lead behaviours
The pressure is now continuous. There are no recovery points left in the year.
Your most useful next step: Look at the next two terms, mark the three weeks that will be hardest, and put a genuine recovery point immediately after each one before the calendar fills. Treat those as fixed.
Lead behaviours
Core behaviours
Sleep is the input a leader controls that affects everything else, and it is usually the first thing surrendered when a week tightens. It is not the whole answer here and should not be treated as one, but little else in this record works well without it.
Most leaders in this position already know what would help and have decided they cannot have it yet. The obstacle is not information but permission, and the permission is almost always self-issued.
Depletion is arithmetic before it is anything else. Where more has been added to a role than has come off it, no amount of personal resilience closes the gap.
Continuing to absorb work because you are quicker at it is understandable and, across a term, expensive. What releases the capacity is accepting that a capable colleague will do it differently rather than badly, and that handing it over gives them development they would not otherwise get.
The practical route out of this is usually work leaving your desk rather than energy arriving at it. Handing something on properly, with the decision attached rather than just the task, is what makes the relief last beyond a fortnight.
Secondary behaviours
Use this before handing anything on. Who can take what is a judgement about specific colleagues, and getting it wrong returns the work to you with interest.
Use this where the pressure has become continuous. Recovery points in a school year exist only if they are placed in the calendar before the calendar fills, which means doing it a term ahead.
Use this where the change has to survive a hard half term. A restorative commitment kept once is a gesture; kept weekly for a term it becomes part of how the job is done.
A useful first action
Write two lists for the last fortnight: what drew energy down, and what put anything back. If the second list is empty, you have your answer and need no further diagnosis.
Suggested approach
- Compare what the last fortnight drew down against what replenished. If there is nothing on the second side, start there.
- List what has been added to your own role in the last year, and what came off to make room for it.
- Decide, for the two largest additions, whether each one stays, moves to somebody else or stops.
- Take the three things you did last week that somebody else could have done, and give one of them away properly, with the decision attached.
- Put the recovery points for the next two terms into the calendar now, before the calendar fills.